


Incy Wincy Spider

by Tawabids



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Detectives Lensherr and MacTaggert, Homophobia, Humiliation, Kidnapping, M/M, Mentions of Suicide, Mutant Husbands, Torture, serial killer au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-15
Updated: 2012-09-23
Packaged: 2017-11-14 06:48:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 40,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/512473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tawabids/pseuds/Tawabids
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erik Lehnsherr is a renowned homicide detective, with his husband Charles at home and his partner on the job, Moira MacTaggert. When a twisted serial killer starts targeting mutants, Erik and Moira are the perfect team for the job, especially since Erik himself is the mutant poster-boy of an NYPD trying to improve their image. </p><p>But what they don't yet know is that the serial killer is an old soul out of Erik's past, and his next move is to pull Charles into his web.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. six bodies and an email

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written for [this prompt](http://xmen-firstkink.livejournal.com/5215.html?thread=7241055) on the X-Men First Kink community, finally cleaned up and reposted.

Erik rummaged in his pocket and took out the last coin from the meter-money. He pinched it between thumb and forefinger and with a nail from his other hand began to peel the metal off in a thin curl. He honed his entire focus into keeping the curl even and intact. The coin got smaller and smaller. When it was nothing but a long, twisting spiral he tossed it down on the kitchen bench and picked up the phone.

Speed dial four.

“MacTaggert.”

Erik opened his mouth. For a moment he could conjure neither voice nor breath. He swallowed. “It’s me,” he grunted. “I’m gonna be a bit scarce tonight.”

“You alright?”

God-fucking-dammit Moira, with her damn instincts. But if Erik had ever been a good cop, he’d been a good liar first. “Yeah, fine, I think seeing the media frenzy tonight did my head a bit. I’ll turn off my phone and be in at nine.”

“Alright, Erik… keep it sharp.”

“When am I not?”

He hung up before she could give some smart-alec answer about Mondays. He couldn’t deal with bad jokes right now, he couldn’t deal with Moira being familiar or comforting. He needed to stay on edge, or he’d end up screaming and wrenching every piece of metal within a mile, his psyche nothing but a thin, fragile spiral like the coin.

He flicked through the contacts on his phone, selected one and cleared his throat.

“Hank? Hey, it’s Erik Lensherr. Can I get a favour? An off-the-books kind of favour? I need to know if you can track an email address.”

\---

_Thirty-six hours earlier_

“Coffee and a cigarette,” muttered Erik, a moment after the EMT had lifted the sheet from what remained of Angel Salvadore, twenty-two, dancer at _Sins ‘n Embers_ strip club, not four blocks east. She’d been missing for approximately three days, give or take a handful of hours after she finished her last shift. Erik hoped the newspapers didn’t pick up on the dancer bit, they'd immediately assume sex worker. He hadn’t known Angel before she’d popped up on their possible victims list two days ago, but she deserved better than to be labelled as just another murdered hooker. They all did.

“Since when do you smoke?” Moira asked, crouching down beside Erik. The EMT had handed him a pair of gloves; he took off his wedding ring before he slipped them on to examine the gaping hole and protruding ribs in Salvadore’s chest.

Three days. She didn’t look as bad as the others. Maybe the killer had been in a hurry. Maybe only the autopsy would clue them in on how much she’d suffered.

As Erik peeled off the gloves and stood up, a forensic boffin handed Moira two steaming cups of convenience store tar. She passed one to Erik and he sipped with a grimace.

“Charles isn’t home ‘til Thursday, I’ve got until then to get the smell out of my clothes,” Erik answered her question at last. He’d quit years ago – Charles’ mother had succumbed to the combined forces of throat cancer and liver failure, and Charles had spent three years battling the demon drink in the early part of their relationship. They had mutually agreed to no more addictions in their house. 

He hadn’t taken his eyes off Angel Salvadore’s arms, laced with a delicate tattoo of insect wings, still sharp black against the blood-drained sallow of her skin.

He glanced up at the beat cop who was sidling towards them, his thumbs in his belt.

“Tell me she’s not…?”

The beat cop nodded. “My partner’s just tracked down the boyfriend. They’re both mutants – he’s finishing his masters in ornithology, just got back from a week-long field trip. He’s pretty shaken up, you need to talk to him soon?”

“We’ll have to,” Moira sighed, looking down at the dead girl. “That’s the third of five victims to be a mutant. Whoever killed her knew about her power or I doubt he’d have caught her.”

“It could be a coincidence,” the beat cop suggested. “Mutants got worse employment and health stats, don’t they? Could be he’s just targeting the bottom rung of society-“

“Excuse me, did someone promote you to detective in the last five minutes and I missed the ceremony?” Erik growled, waving his coffee. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Moira twitch as she barely resisted putting a warning hand on his elbow. When the beat cop muttered an apology, Erik cut him off. “No, I didn’t think so. Go pin up yellow tape or something, go on.”

As they headed back to the car, Moira said, “He’s right, though. Dukes was bouncing from job to job, Worthington had just been thrown onto the street by his father, and Angel was probably living by the pay check. It could be a coincidence,” the tone of her voice clearly declared, don’t-start-that-temper-with-me-mister.

“No, the two humans, the call girl and the burger flipper, they’re the exceptions,” Erik sliced his hand through the air. “They were practice. We’ve got to get a shoulder into him before he starts really building up steam.”

\---

Four murders in less than a month. Prolific but not exceptional, the victims different enough in every way – place of death, backgrounds, occupations, social circles, age and ethnicity – that even Moira and Erik, the best homicide detectives in the city, might not have picked up on the connection. Except for the way they’d died.

Each had been missing for several days before the bodies were dumped without ceremony, always in perfect blind spots in the CCTV network. Always mutilated, always missing a couple of small mementos that were yet to be found – an eye, a hunk of skin, a couple of teeth (in Angel’s case, it turned out to be the aortic arch above her heart). And their injuries - even after a decade on the force, Erik didn't like to dwell on their injuries for more than a moment. The fry cook had to be identified by her dental records. The call girl had been brutally violated. Dukes had been pumped of much of his adipose tissue, with no trace of anaesthetic in the toxicology reports. Worthington, the second mutant victim, had been weighted down and drowned. The sick fuck liked to play, whoever and wherever he was. And he liked to boast, or he would have hidden the bodies a hell of a lot better.

“It’s even on the news over here,” Charles said that night. His voice clear as glass down the phone line despite more than four thousand miles of separation. “I’ve been keeping my eye out for your hulking figure. But it’s in French, of course, so I don’t understand – why do they keep flashing Senator Kelly’s picture?”

Erik rubbed the crease between his eyes. “We think he’s targeting mutants.”

“Oh,” said Charles, in a small voice. And then, typically academic, “Ugh.”

Erik smiled despite it all. “The media’s linking it to the rise in hate crimes, you know how they do – though at least they’re not siding with Kelly for once. I just wish they were on _our_ side. The chief designated me spokesman about the mutant slant,” he took a long breath. “If I see another microphone in the next hundred years, it’ll be too soon.”

“You should be the last person put in that position!” Charles cried, the line crackling a little at his raised voice. After a brief pause, he said suddenly, “I’m going to see if I can transfer my flight home to tomorrow.”

“Charles, no, you’re supposed to have another four days sightseeing, you’ve been looking forward to it all year.”

“I don’t need to see the Palace of Versailles, I need to know you’re eating and staying off the fags.”

“It’ll cost a fortune.”

“The grant will cover it, this is practically a family emergency.”

“You’re being precious.”

“Hey,” Charles had his sternest lecturer’s voice on now, the one he used for students who were risking their degrees to booze it up every other night. “What would you do if you saw me tomorrow?”

Erik rolled his eyes.

“Well? What would you do?”

He muttered, “I’d probably pick you up and carry you to the car inside my coat rather than let you go.”

“Exactly. I’m changing my flights.”

“Whatever. I’ll get you from the airport.”

“I can catch a cab.”

“I’m picking you up, send me the details. How did your talk go yesterday?”

“Quite well, actually. I think I’ve convinced a few more dogmatists that it’s worth letting a criminal psychologist into their conference after all. Provided I’m properly corralled, of course,” he chuckled.

“Fucking visa restrictions, I can’t believe the EU,” Erik ran his hands through his hair. “Imagine if they made you take a fucking drug to stop you being too French, huh? Imagine!”

Charles gave a louder burst of laughter, “No, I didn’t mean the serine inhibitors!” these were the drugs that Charles’ visa required he take to dampen his telepathy when he was out of the country. “I meant my collaboration with the genetics lab. Portia introduced me to make sure they all knew I was her pet psychologist.”

“Ah. Well, the drugs are still an outrage,” Erik grunted.

“Course they are, love, course they are,” he could hear Charles smiling all the way from the other side of the globe. The sound of the smile flowed down his nerves and began to unwind his muscles like the warmth of a fresh bath. “I’ll give you a proper run-down when I get back, I’ve been talking shop all day. Where are you?”

“On the couch,” Erik smirked. “ _The Wolf Man_ is on TV. The original, black and white and all.”

“Turn it off, you don’t need any distractions,” Charles ordered. Erik grinned and thumbed the remote. “Now,” Charles said, his voice lowered, “I want you to reach down and undo your fly for me. Slowly.”

\---

There was a sixth body the next morning. Erik was brushing his teeth when he got the call. He ate toast in the car and tried to get his hair to stay flat before Moira arrived at the scene, a strip of empty land behind a block of condominiums.

“Rahne Sinclair,” he told her as she approached at a jog, still putting her earrings in. “Another mutant. High school senior with no criminal record and two very distraught, middle-class parents. Still willing to bet it could be coincidence?”

"Not on your life," Moira growled.

Everything was in fifth gear after that. Another victim appearing so suddenly had caught them off guard, and the time Sinclair had been missing overlapped significantly with Angel Salvadore’s disappearance. They had probably been held at the same place, their bodies maybe even snatched or dropped off by the same vehicle. Moira and Erik pushed their team non-stop, looking through security footage around the two sites in search of similarities, while going through interviews with the victim’s families and the circumstances surrounding their disappearance, and fielding potential witness calls from what seemed like half the city. Forensics were starting to come back on the initial tests from Worthington’s body, but once again there were no staggering abnormalities and no trace of the killer left behind.

When Erik got a chance to check his emails, he had three dozen to sift through before Charles’ popped up. When he saw the flight details he groaned – Charles was due to land in ten minutes.

“Where are you going?” Moira asked. “I thought we were getting lunch together.”

“I’ve got to skip lunch – be back in under an hour – sorry –“ Erik babbled, trying to put on his coat and text Charles to say he’d be late at the same time. He knew he should just let his husband get a cab, that Charles would not think twice about waiting until the late evening for him to get home, but Charles had been in Europe hopping from conference to conference for almost three weeks now. Right at this moment, all Erik wanted more than anything was to see those baby-blues and kiss that I-know-best smirk off his face. Then he’d go straight back to the office, he promised himself.

But though the flight was quarter of an hour late, Charles was nowhere to be found. Erik spent twenty minutes wandering around the airport with his phone glued to his hand in vain. He got through to voicemail when he called and none of his texts had been answered. Charles must have left his phone at the bottom of his bag and had taken a cab after all.

Wretchedly disappointed but aching to get his teeth back into the work, Erik returned to Moira and the case.

\---

He didn’t get home until nearly ten, but found the apartment dark. There was no lingering smell of one of Charles’ hideously overcooked, underflavoured meals and no keys in the bowl by the door. Erik switched on the hall light and stuck his head into the bedroom, expecting to see Charles dozing, probably with the lamp still on and a book open on his chest, jetlagged out of his skull.

The bedroom was empty and the air cool. With a frown, Erik found himself wandering the length of the apartment as if waiting for Charles to jump out and yell ‘boo!’, while the microwave reheated the leftover tomato linguine he’d made the day before. He checked his phone again. No messages.

Charles had probably missed the flight, that was it. He’d be stuck in airport limbo, determined to get home as promised but struggling to deal with foreign travel agents when he didn’t speak the language and couldn’t use his telepathy to push a few people where he wanted them.

Satisfied with his deduction, Erik sat down at the computer to do one last check of his email.

There was one from Charles’ smartphone, with no subject line. Erik opened it, but instead of explanations or new flight times, there was a single line of text:

>You'll want to see this ;-)

Below that was a link. Erik huffed a laugh. What was Charles playing at? What kind of last-minute diversion could have made him miss his plane? He clicked the link, but as the window started to load, he was jolted by the ringing of the landline. He got up and answered the cordless on the kitchen wall.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Mr Lensherr. How are you?"

The tone was light, too familiar for a totally unknown voice. Erik's brow tightened immediately. "I'm fine. Who am I speaking to?"

"Go and look at the link you just opened."

"I'm not sure what you mean," Erik said lightly. Out of his back pocket he pulled his cellphone and started to text the tech team on duty at the station, to get a trace on the call.

"Yes you do," said the voice. "Go and look. I strongly suggest you do so before you call backup."

His cell still in his hand and the text half-composed, Erik went back into the lounge to look at his laptop, which sat on the coffee table between three empty mugs and a pile of Charles' subscribed journals. The link had fully loaded. It was a series of photographs on an empty site background. The lighting was very sharp. Someone had wanted to make sure he didn’t miss a single detail.

Charles, hair splayed across his face, a fluoro-pink ball gag strapped around his head. He was wearing only his boxers, a loose dress shirt and that woollen vest that Erik always complained made him look ten years older. His hands were cuffed to either end of an old-fashioned gas radiator. In the first photo, one leg was crooked up almost to his chin, the other splayed out – a rich purple-green bruise was swollen around that knee. In the next shot he was squinting and turning his head away from the camera flash. In the final one, an extreme close-up, a hand gloved in brown leather had stretched from behind the camera and grabbed his chin, tipping his head and forcing him to turn his profile towards the camera. His eyes were squeezed closed. The ridiculous pink ball gag, the sort of trinket even a sex shop sold as novelty, bulged between his jaws and Erik could see the sheen of saliva in the corner of his mouth.

A wave of impotent adrenaline flooded Erik's veins. He crashed down onto his knees on the carpet just to get closer to the screen. The hand still clutching his cell reached up to hit the arrow keys, searching for some clue as to where the site originated.

His cop's conditioning began to clamp down on his panic. "This is a fucking trick, you pathetic hack," he spat into the phone. "My husband's in Paris. Don't give me this bullshit."

"Don't give me this bull, don't give me this bull," the voice mocked. "No, Mr Lensherr, how about you don't give _me_ any bull?"

"He's in Paris," Erik repeated, like a mantra. This had to be a shapeshifter, an illusion, a projected nightmare. Charles' own stepsister, whichever continent she was backpacking across these days, could have executed such a deception in the blink of an eye. Hell, a good graphic designer could probably have whipped something up in Photoshop. 

“In Paris?” the voice asked, still mocking. “It is his phone I emailed you from, though, isn’t it? And his flight got in at two-twenty, didn’t it? No, no, of course not – it was fifteen minutes late. Not as late as you, though.”

“Fuck you. I’m hanging up,” Erik snarled.

“I’ll castrate him,” said the voice. Every muscle in Erik’s body rippled, and a quiver ran through the walls as the metal in the apartment, right down to the steel reinforcements, vibrated with his hate. 

“You haven’t hung up, Mr Lensherr. Maybe you should? Call the airport. You’ve got a badge number and an authoritative voice; ask them if he came through customs at the US border. Of course, while you’re on hold, gritting your teeth against the elevator music, I’ll be attempting to stem the blood flow from the remains of Mr Xavier’s scrotum. I don’t want him to die _yet_ , obviously.”

“Let me talk to him.”

“Ah, no. You only get rewards for good behaviour.”

“What do you want? Cash? Did I put some buddy of yours behind bars? Because I know a dozen fucking shapeshifters who could pull this shit off, and trust me, the penalties for fraud and lying to an officer can become pretty steep when you throw in a brutal victim impact statement.”

“Mmm, I can smell you pissing yourself from here. Like a cornered dog.”

_“What the fuck do you want?”_

“I want ears on the inside, Mr Lensherr. I want a spanner in works, if it comes to that.”

“You’re him,” Erik said, half under his breath. “You’re the mutant-killer. You sad sack of psycho shit, we are going to fucking catch you and you’re gonna dance for us on the six o’clock news--”

“You’re not going to catch me,” the voice replied, and for the first time, there was a crimson fringe of emotion at its edges. “You freak, you gosh-darn _fairy_ , I won’t have some mutant pervert like you catch me, you get me? You’re not even worth playing with, every one of you should be wiped from the earth--”

“I’ve heard that from every thick-as-a-brick bully since I was a kid. You’re not even _original_ ,” Erik sneered.

“ _Shut up, scum!_ ” the voice was breathing in heavy, spit-laced gasps. An image flashed through Erik’s mind of Charles cuffed to the radiator and he fell silent. After several agonizing seconds, the voice returned, calm and smooth as before.

“If anyone asks, Mr Xavier is still very much in France. And I will know if you go running to the lovely MacTaggert for help,” and suddenly he put on a poor imitation of Charles’ accent. “ _Don’t get distracted by_ The Wolf Man _, Erik. Undo your fly, take hold of that big ol’ dick._ ” 

Some part of Erik shrivelled and died. For a moment he thought he might actually be sick.

“You tell anyone about this conversation, I take it out of his skin. You fail to follow one of my instructions, I cut off a piece of him. I might even make him eat it. Are we on the same page, Mr Lensherr?”

Erik stayed silent, his lungs heaving, his teeth grinding together. The voice said with a mocking lick of lechery. “Tell me you’ll play nice, Mr Lensherr. Or you can hear him scream through the gag.”

“I’ve got you,” Erik said in a rush. “Okay? I’ve got it.”

The voice made a kissing noise into the receiver. “Talk to you soon. Bye, bye now.”

The line went dead.

 _He’s probably the best telepath in the country,_ Erik punched the thought through his fear, _Even with the serine inhibitors, he might be able to project, he’ll call for help without this prick even hearing it._ Unless the rest of the world was out of his dampened range, of course. _The drugs will wear off. He’ll take hold of this guy’s mind and play him like a puppet. He’ll be okay._ Unless the perp was forcing him to keep taking the serine inhibitors. _How many pills did Charles have left? Surely not more than four days worth. In four days, his telepathy would come back._ Unless that wasn’t a beacon, but a deadline. Without the inhibitors, the only way for the killer to control Charles would be to keep him constantly unconscious. Or dead.

_No, no, that is NOT going to happen._

Erik squeezed the phone in his hand so hard his arm began to shake. He stared at the photos sitting on the laptop. The flush in Charles’ cheeks, the needless shame he’d seen on so many beaten and exhausted victims during his time as a cop. The bruising on Charles’ knee, and now that he looked at it, a jutting ridge that might have indicated it was dislocated. He used to leave this sort of horror story at work and come home to Charles. It was the only thing that kept him sane sometimes. Now Charles was on the wrong side of the chalk line between normality and horror. Now there was nothing but willpower between Erik and the void of hate and rage that he’d turned back from so often since his mother died. 

He forced himself to put the phone down. He got up, stood staring down at the laptop for several minutes, and finally went to his coat and took out the last coin in his pocket.


	2. baiting the hook

_Twelve hours ago_

"Mr Xavier! Excuse me, Mr Xavier!"

Charles stopped massaging the long-haul headache out of his brow and looked up. A young cop was striding towards him through the packed terminal, waving his arm. Charles raised his own in return. The man smiled a little nervously as he slipped around pair of tourists lugging wheeled suitcases and stuck out his hand for Charles to shake. Charles did not fail to notice that the fellow was quite the looker, with a model's cheekbones and dark green eyes. Not as young as Charles had first thought - probably at least mid-thirties - but wearing his age well. Charles made a note to tease Erik about it when he saw him.

"Mr Lensherr sent me to grab you," the cop smiled. "This case he’s on - it's taken a turn for the worse, he's going to be busy for the rest of the day."

"I could have taken a cab," Charles grumbled, half to himself. "No need to waste police resources - not that that's your fault," he beamed at the man. With a face like that, you couldn’t help beaming. 

They collected Charles' suitcase. The cop shouldered his way into the pack as soon as Charles pointed it out on the conveyor, the crowds parting willingly when they saw the uniform. It was amazing how fast you could get out of a crowded airport when you had a man in blue standing beside you. Erik should wear his old uniform more often. Charles supposed there was probably some annoying law against that.

"I'm just in one of the plainclothes cars," the cop explained, leading him through the carpark to a P15 section. He paid for the parking in cash and headed out. "Do you mind if I take a weird route? I've got to make a delivery to the south end station after I drop you off."

"No problem. I'm in no hurry," Charles shrugged. He was thinking of the big bed in the apartment, flannelette sheets and pillows that smelled of Erik. He hadn't slept well on the plane. Serine inhibitors did that to him; after living with the constant hum of thoughts since childhood, sitting in a big, cramped tube full of mentally-silent people was too creepy for him to relax. It was like being surrounded by zombies. Yes, a nap sounded like the best thing in the world right now. Maybe after raiding the fridge.

"Conference go well?" the cop asked.

"I was at two, actually," Charles replied. "The marvels of trying to broach two fields of science at once."

"Ah. I wouldn't know much about that," the cop said. "What is it you do, exactly?"

Charles had been doing this spiel for three weeks, but he never failed to enjoy talking to laypeople about his work. He spent the next twenty minutes explaining about his collaboration with the longitudinal study, and his particular emphasis on the interaction between genes and the psycho-social environment. He had switched his phone on as soon as he was back in the terminal, and he heard it go off in his pocket, but then the cop asked about their findings with the trio association and Charles was too wrapped up in the lecture to answer it.

Too wrapped up to even notice he didn’t recognise the neighbourhood, all big warehouses and disused factories. He didn't even think about it until the cop pulled into the weed-cracked, oil-stained desert of an old carpark.

Charles stopped talking, but he was still so far into the swing of things, inebriated on the joy of the science he loved, that he didn’t even ask what was going on. The cop glanced in the mirror and said, “Hold on a tick, I need to grab something.”

He got out and walked around to the back on Charles’ side. He opened the door and held out his hand. “Can I borrow your phone?”

For the first time, a niggle of confusion wormed its way through Charles’ jetlag and homesick delirium. He automatically put his hand into his coat pocket, pulled out his phone and looked at it. Three missed calls from Erik, two texts.

“I’ll just call the old man,” he said with a smile. “Let him know I landed safely.”

“No, don’t do that,” said the cop. Not sharply, but with the kind of surety that made Charles freeze. “Give me the phone.”

Real, thumping confusion was starting up like a metronome in Charles’ skull. But he was a cop. And Erik had sent him, hadn’t he? This fact seemed to have solidified in history, though Charles couldn’t remember exactly how he’d learned it.

Charles gave him the phone.

The cop didn’t say ‘thank you’, or even (in hindsight) some pithy one-liner about what an idiot Charles had been. He put the phone in his pocket, took two steps back – out of lunging range – and drew his gun.

Charles drew in a breath sharply, but didn’t move. His tongue flicked out and licked his bottom lip. _Idiot_ , he thought, and then _the drugs, ten seconds without these damn drugs and I would never have got into the car. Erik is going to be so smug._

“Get out, slowly,” the cop – the fake cop – said calmly. “Put your hands on your head.”

Charles did as he was told. His extremities were going numb with shock.

“Go around to the driver’s side and get in. Put your seatbelt on. If you do anything I don’t expect you to do, I will not hesitate to shoot you in the head. That alright with you?”

Charles nodded. As he walked around the car, with the chassis between him and the gunman, he faintly wondered if he should make a break for it now. But the man was so calm. And it was eighty feet to the edge of the car park, plus a corrugated iron fence to climb when he got there. If the man was even a half-decent shot, Charles would end up with a bullet in his back.

He got in and started the engine. The gunman climbed in beside him. The mouth of the barrel never left Charles’ peripheral vision.

"What's your name?" Charles asked. The gunman didn't answer. “If it’s money you want, I’m happy to take you to an ATM right now,” he said as mildly as he could.

“I don’t want money,” the gunman said.

“What do you want?” Charles asked. “I’ll try to help.”

He was rather proud of himself for sounding so calm, now he noticed it. Good job, Charles. Keep it up.

 _It’ll be fine._ The voice in his head now sounded a lot like Erik.

“I want you to shut your mouth until I tell you to open it,” the gunman replied. Charles noted, as if this was some case study, _he doesn’t swear. Religious upbringing?_

Charles stayed quiet for the rest of the drive. He was memorising street names as they passed and collating possibilities, trying to work out the best action for every possible scenario, holding them all in his head. Like trying to carry live, flopping fish in his arms. This was probably a hostage thing – taking a detective’s partner hostage, yes, this was almost certainly something to do with Erik, or maybe even one of Erik’s bosses. If this was something… something else, alright (Charles took a deep breath and let it out slowly), he’d just stay calm and deal with it. Play along until the gunman let his guard down.

And right now Erik would no doubt be looking for him. Knowing Erik, he would have every officer in the city looking for him. Unless he thought Charles had just taken a cab.

Ten seconds off the damn drugs and he’d have this under control. Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_.

“Stop here,” said the gunman. They were in a different part of the industrial district, a wide street lined by unleased offices, their signs starting to look a little faded. No doubt someone had had big plans before the recession. Charles put the car into neutral, but left the handbrake off. If he could just be alone in the car for a moment, he’d slam it back into gear and accelerate up to seventy before the man knew what had hit him-

“You get out first. Put your hands on the roof the car. Any sudden moves, I fire at the closest part of you I see.”

Charles got out. The air was balmy and the roof of the car was warm under his hands. It was a nice car, a silver Lexus only a few years old. Well cared-for by the look of it. Charles memorised that, too. When this was over, it would all help to track this guy down.

The gunman got out and told Charles to walk ahead. They stopped outside the door of a three-storey building, all big glass windows and new plaster painted a weary shade of eggplant. The gunman told him to stand beside the door, once again with his hands on his head. Charles stood.

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched the man slide the gun back into its holster – the uniform looked so _perfect_ , and Charles was in and out of the station enough to know his uniforms. Where had he got it from? Did he know someone on the force? Had he been a cop himself, maybe kicked out recently, knew the details of employees’ hostage insurance and wanted a cool million to retire to Majorca? Charles tensed his legs. He watched the man slide the key into the lock, and then he bolted.

“Hey!”

He made it about thirty feet before the gunman was on him. The man had moved like lightning, tackling Charles high on his shoulders and throwing him to the ground. Charles hit the sidewalk with his arm trapped under him, and before he could coil and jump to his feet again, the man drove his heel down onto the knee of Charles’ outstretched left leg.

A hollow, ungovernable scream poured from Charles’ mouth. The pain ran right through him like a concussion in every nerve, fading rapidly to a sharp agony centralised in his knee.

“Get up,” the man snarled. The gun was back in his hand. “Get up!”

“You broke my leg,” Charles said through gritted teeth. He was relatively certain it was only dislocated – only! – but he didn’t intend to play it down.

“Then you won’t mind if I put a bit of lead in it,” the man said without missing a beat, directing the gun towards the hideously angled knee.

“Please,” Charles held out his hand, pushing himself up with the other arm. “I can’t walk on it.”

“Then you can crawl like the vermin you are, mutant,” the man hocked and spat. It landed on Charles’ collar.

Charles closed his eyes, dizziness catching hold of him and lifting him out of his body for a moment. It was suddenly hard to breathe, and all his neat plans of action had fled. This was bad, wasn’t it? This was really bad.

He wanted Erik. But Erik wasn’t here, and dammit, he hadn’t been married to a cop for eight years only to wilt in his first crisis. He pushed himself up onto his hands and good knee and began to crawl. The bad leg flared with every inch that he dragged it. He was catching holes in his expensive jeans. The whole time, the man in his now sickeningly incongruous uniform stayed back, far enough out of range that Charles had no hope of making a grab for the gun.

He was forced through the door and down the main corridor, still on hands and knees, his cheeks burning with the humility of it. The office was thickly carpeted and never used, bits of workman’s tape still decorating the walls in places. At the rear of the building, the man moved ahead to kick open a door with a jimmied lock. It lead through to an older wing, this time definitely some decades outdated by the shiny new office. It smelled of oil and wood shavings and was lit by fluorescent torches hung on recently bolted hooks, connected to the mains by extension cords.

The man herded Charles down a flight of stairs into a warren of concrete basements, and stopped him in a small room with only a broken-off pipe in the far corner and a gas radiator against the wall. There was a black sports bag behind the door that the man rummaged in, never taking his eyes of Charles for more than half a second. When he stood up he was holding two pairs of handcuffs.

“Take off your coat and throw it over here,” he ordered.

“I’ll get cold,” Charles said. The basement was chilly despite the sun outside.

“I don’t _care_ ,” the man said with drawn-out sarcasm.

Charles took off his coat, whose pockets contained his keys, wallet, boarding pass and watch, which he’d taken off on the plane when he was trying to get some sleep. He was left in only his shirt and vest. He tried to retrieve the watch, but the gunman waved his pistol and told Charles to give it all. He tossed over one set of cuffs in return and made Charles chain one wrist to the end of the radiator. Satisfied, he holstered the gun again and came out to cuff the other hand to the opposite end, leaving Charles hung slack between them.

“Right,” the gunman said, sounding almost professional now. “Let’s have a look at that leg.”

“It’s fine,” Charles snapped, and then jerked as the gunman crouched over his feet. “Don’t touch me.”

The man stopped. His green eyes, that had looked so appealing, now seemed dense and greasy as a bog. “Hey. Mr Xavier?” he put his hand on Charles’ injured knee and squeezed. Charles bit down on the inside of his cheek and made no noise. “Here’s how it works. You do what I say. Everything I say, to the letter. If you don’t, I make sure your stay with me becomes the most painful experience of your life. I’m not talking the-time-you-had-your-wisdom-teeth-out painful, I’m talking the kind of agony that they train the marines to resist if captured by ragheads in some desert hole. Are we clear?”

Charles nodded. The man smiled, and it was cold and playful and feline and Charles wanted to be at home so bad it made his head spin.

The man untied his shoes, tossed them over to the sports bag, then took hold of the jeans at the cuffs and pulled them off. Charles regretted, more than every mistake he’d made today, letting Erik talk him into buying jeans that were on the tight side (“They show off your ass,” Erik had said, in the changing rooms at Holisters, and just the flash of that memory eased the pain a little). The ache in his knee reached crescendo like a siren as the jeans jerked over it, and then plateaued once the gunman had thrown them aside.

“Doesn’t look so bad,” the man said, twisting Charles’ leg side to side. Charles gritted his teeth and determinedly did not look at the displaced patella jutting hideously up out of his skin.

“You fucking try it, then,” he sneered, huffing in sharp breaths through his nose.

The gunman looked at him. “That’s enough cussing,” he said, getting up and dusting his hands. “And enough of you blathering on too, I thought I’d go mad,” he returned to the black sports bag and took out something pink with buckles. He walked right up close, shadowing Charles from the harsh glow of the halogen lamp above. “Open up.”

Charles shook his head and kept his mouth firmly closed.

The gunman lifted one foot and placed it, very lightly, over Charles’ knee. “I said open up,” he said softly, as if chastising a child.

Charles calculated for about one and a half seconds, and opened his jaws. The gunman shoved the ballgag in and strapped it tight, catching his hair in the buckle. Charles could barely breath around fresh, stinking plastic, and with his tongue pushed back, saliva immediately began to pool in his mouth.

 _Fuck you_ , Charles thought, his eyes locked on the gunman’s. He pushed the thought as hard as he could, feeling it dissipate in his own neurons. _He’s going to fucking kill you._

“A little of that is getting through, you know,” the gunman raised his eyebrows. “If your powers come back, I suggest in future you don’t alert me.”

He stuffed Charles’ coat and jeans into the sports bag, slung the strap over his shoulder and then switched out the light.

“Sweet dreams, freak,” he whispered, and shut the door.

Charles sat in the dark, skin breaking out in goose pimples and the dregs of adrenalin kicking up his heart rate. His feet and thighs were cold against the concrete and his throat felt gritty-dry. The cuffs were already starting to wear at his wrists.

 _I’ve seen his face,_ Charles thought. There was no triumph in it. The gunman had been casual and calm about Charles seeing every little detail on his person. Either he was much more arrogant than he appeared – and Charles doubted it, the smart ones never were – or he simply had no plans to let Charles go home alive.

But he would. He was going to get home. In one piece, more or less. 

\---

For some length of time - it might have been half an hour, or three times that, Charles had never been cuffed to a radiator in the dark before - Charles could think of nothing except how to get comfortable. The space between his shoulder blades was starting to cramp, and his buttocks, protected by only the thin cotton of his boxers, were already cold and stiff. He clenched his hands periodically to make sure they weren't going to sleep. He tried to think of ways to escape - it was always so easy in the movies, wasn't it? The cuffs were always easy to pick, or the bad guy let the victim out to stretch their legs, or tried to order pizza and got caught. But Charles knew that, unless he got very, very lucky, this bad guy was not going to slip up.

That left a couple of options. 1) Cooperate completely and wait for Erik. 2) Psychology. Talk the bad guy into trust him, letting his guard down. 

_You're an academic researcher,_ a snide part of Charles reminded him. _You've got zero training in negotiating with real-life hostage takers._

 _Shut up, you,_ Charles told the voice. _It can't hurt._

He heard the gunman's heavy footsteps on the concrete steps outside, and then the sound of the door being unbolted. Charles blinked as the fluorescent bulbs came on, but his eyes weren't even adjusted to them before a camera flash went off in his face. He winced and turned away. Another flash. A hand grabbed his neck and turned it into the black eyes of the lens. Charles managed to blink just as the flash went off again. The gunman patted his cheek roughly and then was gone, the light flicking out and the door closing behind him. 

Charles rubbed the cheek against the cloth of his shoulder to wear off the lingering touch. He closed his eyes. There was no difference in the darkness, open or closed. His heart was pounding again, but he steadied his breath through his nose. Who knew when that door would open again, or what the gunman would want next time.

The first thing to think about was getting the leg under control. If he did get a chance to run, he wasn't going to do it at a hop. It was not a new injury. Charles’ left knee was exceedingly prone to dislocation, and he had in fact considered surgery for it last year, since Erik’s insurance covered elective – but he’d put it off, with the collaboration in full spin and the papers sitting at the back of his head waiting to be authored.

He’d first dislocated it when he was twenty-six. He and Erik had been dating a year, and living together only a month. It was halfway through his doctorate and he’d had a night on the town, celebrating a friend’s thesis hand-in. As with many nights back then, he’d ended up celebrating a whole lot harder than she had. He didn’t remember stumbling home drunk and slipping on the outside stairs of the flat that he and Erik shared with three students and another rookie cop. Nor did he remember Erik finding him at the bottom of the stairs in a huddle, near-hypothermic and with puke down his front, nor Erik carrying him almost a block to borrow a friend’s car, nor a single second of the trip to the emergency room. He _did_ remember waking up in the ED to a doctor telling him to go home, he had no time for idiot students with bung knees. And the row the next day, Erik calling him a _dumbass drunk_ and threatening to move out.

The doctor had warned him the tendons and ligaments would never heal right, that there would always be a tendency for it to pop out if he twisted it at an angle. He’d learned to take care of it after that, though he hadn’t learned much else – it had been another two years before he sought help for the drinking. Since then he’d dislocated it again on three more occasions, including during a particularly vigorous afternoon in bed on Erik’s birthday (and hadn’t that been a fun trip to the emergency department). He avoided sports as a result. He felt the knee was therefore responsible for the hint of a professor’s gut he’d started to develop (what Erik called “cuddle-weight”, the skinny bastard) – that and his husband’s cooking, of course. It was just one of those things.

Charles scooted himself forward as far from the radiator as he could and used his uninjured foot to investigate the bad knee. It was swollen and tender, but did not feel significantly worse than he'd dealt with before. He put his foot under his knee and lifted it gently. The pain in the ligaments spiked, but he got the knee propped up on an angle, held there by pressing his bad foot to the concrete despite the strain that put on the injury. He managed to get his good foot up and hooked round in front of the knee. He could feel the displaced cap grinding down and bit down on the gag as hard as could, then pulled back with his good foot.

With a wet pop, the head of his femur slid back onto the cushion of cartilage around the joint. There was a jar of pain, so white-hot he saw stars and swore in a rapid burst through the gag, which helped. He knew it would be sore and wouldn't take much weight for a few days, but it should be enough for a short sprint if he was careful.

He thought of Erik as he tried to wriggle back into a comfortable position. All he could imagine for now was Erik obsessed.

Charles had had plenty of time to get to know the darker facets of his husband over the years. Erik had invited him into his head on many occasions. On those days Charles knew stronger than he knew he was alive and that there was solid ground beneath them, that Erik was his partner in every way, forever. They'd explored each other’s minds together, drifted like glass bottles through memories and fantasies. But even when he was sweet and pliant and loving, there were catacombs in Erik's mind that Charles had never entered, that had iron doors and smelled of electricity. The memory of Edie Lehnsherr’s death was in there, and old hates that festered out of Charles' reach, where company was unwelcome. 

The moods came whenever a big case was on his books, whenever there was heavy media coverage or mutants involved. Erik withdrew until it was like living with a ghost. He’d rise like a machine at five thirty in the morning, long before Charles was even willing to wake up long enough to say goodbye, then hit the gym for two hours or more before he went straight to the office. He’d be home by six or seven, jam his headphones on and cook in a frenzy, listening to indie-label hip-hop or country, neither of which Charles could stand. Dinner would be incredible as ever, but Erik would pick at a tiny portion while Charles, guilty at the waste, helped himself to seconds. He was always thin as a rake anyway, but sometimes when a case was particularly bad Charles found himself sticking his hands down the back of Erik’s pants not just to cop a feel, but to see how low the band was hanging on Erik’s hips.

But he had never crept into his husband's thoughts when he was in one of his dark moods. Even if that was when he most wanted to swim down into Erik's thoughts and understand what the world looked like through Erik's eyes, it was also when least dared to, when he was most afraid of what he would find. 

So he watched Erik from the outside, as if through glass, unable to truly touch him, but always calling and beckoning. Whatever happened, Erik must never forget that Charles was calling him home. And then one day, just like that – not always when the police made a breakthrough or an arrest, sometimes without any apparent trigger – Erik would be back, all sharp smiles and wandering hands, all slouched over the sofa and putting his feet on the essays Charles was trying to mark. 

Charles had long ago chosen to love both Eriks rather than neither. He had worried, just a little, when the third murder had cropped up three weeks ago, right before he left for Europe. That was when, like a coin flipping in slow motion, Erik’s obsessive side had started to show its face. But he wasn’t the man’s babysitter, for goodness’ sake, so he’d waved him goodbye at the airport without thinking twice about it. Even when the English news sites on his phone had started to display headlines with _serial killer_ shoved into them, he’d been too busy with liaisons and conference dinners and practising his talks. It wasn't until Erik had said the words, “targeting mutants” that he’d booked the first flight back.

If only he hadn’t. If he had just leave Erik afloat for four more days instead of panicking, how different things would be right now.

\---

He was left alone for much longer after the photographs. When he heard the footsteps again he made his leg sit slack and a bit twisted. Hopefully the gunman wouldn't notice it was in better shape.

Once again the lights flickered on, once again Charles squinted until his eyes adjusted. The gunman squatted in front of him this time, their eyes almost level. He was holding a water bottle and something else in his hand, something that rattled, but Charles refused to break eye contact long enough to look at it.

"I was just on the phone to your husband. He was very rude to me," the gunman said lazily.

Charles tried to speak - something like _let me talk to him!_ \- but of course it was quite unintelligible through the gag. 

"I quite agree, he is a prick," the gunman tilted his head. "Now. This says," he raised his hand and Charles saw he was holding the box of serine inhibitors from Charles' luggage, “take one twice a day with water. Well, it's just about bedtime and I'd say you're due,” he waved the bottle of spring water in front of Charles’ face. "If I remove that thing, are you going to make this difficult?”

Charles refused to acknowledge him. The gunman apparently didn’t expect him to, because he began to unbuckle the gag without further condescension. As it slipped out, Charles clamped his jaws shut and squirmed away when the man locked a hand around his neck, squeezing just short of actually blocking off his air supply. 

“Open your mouth,” he ordered.

Charles shook his head. The gunman put the water bottle down and without letting go of his neck he hit him, hard enough that he tasted blood. Charles gaped, feeling as stupid and stunned as if he’d walked into a glass door, and the gunman grabbed his jaw and shoved the pill into his mouth before he could close it. His fingers tasted of engine grease and maybe if Charles had been someone angry and bruised like Erik he would have bitten down, through ligaments and gristle, near-severed the first joint before the gunman even realised he was in pain. But it all happened so fast, and the next thing he knew the man’s hand, clammy and slick-tipped with Charles’ own saliva, was covering his mouth and pinching his nose shut. 

“Swallow,” the gunman barked.

Charles writhed, but the man had two hands on his face now, and he was already aching for breath. He swallowed, feeling the tiny pill go down hard and dry as a lump of gravel, but still the hands wouldn’t let go, they seemed too big and too airtight to be real. He gave a muffled shout through them, and the man let him go, cracked the bottle of water while he was gasping for breath and put it to his lips. Charles drank without struggling, suddenly remembering how thirsty he was, and choked on it because the gunman was tipping too fast. It was taken away after only a few mouthfuls.

He coughed his lungs clear, water dripping down his chin. 

“You don’t seem to understand,” the gunman said. “If you don’t take the drugs, I will kill you long before their effects wear off. Do you think Mr Lensherr will know, with some magic mutant-sense? He won’t know. He will follow my instructions, and you’ll be dead, and I’ll weight you and dump you somewhere he’ll never find you. The only reason you are still alive is because you’re not a threat. So next time, take the pill without being a child about it.”

“Can I have some more water?” Charles croaked, staring at the gunman’s shoes. Shiny black brogues, bizarrely flamboyant against the police outfit he was still wearing. Charles noted them, but dimly, no longer feeling any thrill at his attempts to stay calm and in control. He wasn’t in control. There was no point in pretending any longer.

“No. Not after your behaviour.”

“I need to piss.”

“You don’t seem to understand that you’re being punished,” the gunman ducked his head low, trying to look at Charles’ face while he chastised him. “When you do as you’re told, you can have a few luxuries.”

“Just uncuff one hand,” Charles strained weakly against the metal. “Just so I can go in the corner, for God’s sake,” he closed his eyes.

The gunman picked up the ball gag without bothering to tell him ‘no’ again.

“You’re pathetic,” Charles shouted, a flash of strength rippling in his veins. “You get off on power and it’s pathetic. You’re less than human!”

The gunman didn’t rise to the bait. He forced the gag between Charles’ teeth once more, got up and flicked off the light. “At least I don’t pretend otherwise,” he said as he closed the door.

In the dark, Charles hung from the cuffs, unable to even brush his wayward fringe out of his eyes. The cold began to creep in, tightening his aching bladder, stinging the inflamed skin around his injured knee.

 _I’m already cracking,_ he thought. And then, as if there was someone listening. _I’m not strong enough. I’m just a professor. Don’t make me do this any longer._

The cellar had no answer.


	3. a toad in the eel trap

Hank pushed his glasses up his nose, his skin sleek with sweat in the dim lighting of his study. He’d greeted Erik at the door in a saggy Kara Thrace T-shirt and black silk pyjama pants, having just got out of bed when Erik called. When he’d seen the look on Erik’s face, the skin on his hands (the only part that wasn’t covered in fur) had gone rather pale. Now they were holed up in his study, an enormous cavern filling one corner of Hank’s two-storey suburban mansion. Despite its size, Erik had had trouble finding somewhere to sit down. Every surface was covered in drawings or bits of machines, and computers hooked up into LANs to communally process god-knew-what. The rest of the walls and floor contained nature photographs – the mountains of Laos, South American jungles, aerial views of the Rift Valley. Hank spent months every year travelling barefoot, backpacked and blue-furred on famous walks. Charles had once said it was the only thing that kept his enormous mind glued together. 

Erik was never really sure whether he liked Hank McCoy or not. He respected his genius, sure, and admired the fact that he funded his exorbitant lifestyle completely off government contracts and as a software consultant for the biggest companies of the decade. He was connected to Erik through Charles’ stepsister Raven, as the two blue mutants had apparently been engaged sometime in their youth and remained good friends after the breakup. So of course Erik wanted to like someone who was such an old friend of both Raven and Charles, the two people whose judgement he most trusted in the world. But at the same time, he couldn’t relax around Hank. 

Maybe he was jealous of Hank’s intellect, and the way he could talk science with Charles while Erik struggled to remember the difference between DNA and RNA. He suspected it was more childish than that, that he was disdainful of the way Hank seemed to lack resolve. Erik had honed his life into a perfect shaft of focus: being a cop was his purpose, and Charles was his world. Everything was simple when you knew exactly why you existed and what reason you had to get out of bed in the morning. Hank didn’t seem to have that – he muddled from one top-secret or super-funded project to another, building brilliance into everything he touched but never apparently able to build anything for himself. 

Now he was inspecting Erik’s laptop with a look of growing, embarrassed confusion, his claws sprinting delicately across the keys. Erik had told him not to click the link, and he finally looked up.

“I don’t understand. What do you want to know? It came from Charles’ phone.”

“Yes, but where was Charles’ phone? Can’t you… can’t you hack it or something?” Erik growled, folding his arms as he loomed over Hank’s shoulder.

Hank gave him a look of blank despair at his technical incompetence. He sighed, “The phone company will have records of which cellphone tower pinged it, yeah, but I can’t do that from here.”

Erik shuffled where he stood, ducking his head and trying to find a polite way to say _can’t you just MAKE IT WORK?_

“Look, what is this?” Hank asked. “I presume this is something you don’t want Charles to know about.”

“Pretty much,” Erik shrugged. 

“You don’t think…” Hank winced, “Charles is having an affair, or something? Is that what this is about?”

Erik would have liked to give Hank a resounding smack to the jaw, but that would have been extremely counter-productive and he knew Hank was trying to help. He could tell him the truth – but he knew Hank would go to the police the second Erik had left the house, and the killer had already proved himself capable of bugging phone lines. Somehow. And, with all due respect to his own profession, Erik knew the police wouldn’t have time to get a team together to reach this guy before he… before he did something terrible. 

So he muttered, “It’s something like that. I really don’t want to talk about it. Isn’t there anything else you can try?”

Hank took a deep breath through his rows of canines and looked back at the laptop. “Mind grabbing me a soda from the fridge? Over there,” he waved his hand in a gesture that encompassed roughly forty percent of the room. 

Erik managed to find the fridge after staring at the stacked servers and plastic shelving for almost a full minute. He headed over and pulled the door open, then turned back to ask Hank which in particular he wanted.

Hank was just clicking the link in the email.

“No!” Erik lurched back across the room. All the metal around them shuddered and one of the stacked-up switchboxes nearby sparked. 

“Woah,” Hank threw his arms over his head. “Jesus man, calm down! I’m sorry I just thought I’d take a peek – but it’s fine, whatever –” he pointed at the screen. The browser was displaying an error message from the remote server, that the page they were looking for no longer existed.

A twist of mixed relief and dismay silenced Erik’s protests. So his secret was still safe – but at the same time, he had lost what might be the last glimpse he would ever have of his husband alive.

“This is really serious, huh?” Hank mumbled, watching Erik’s face. He scrubbed his claws through the fur on his forehead. “Listen. I know a guy who lives with a guy who works for Charles’ phone carrier. I’ll see if I can call in a favour, but it could take a day or two. If I promise to do my best, will you not trash my study with your emotional EMPs?” 

Erik ground his teeth together. “This is really important.”

“I got that, Erik,” Hank said, a little nervously, like he genuinely didn’t know how much violence Erik was capable of. “But I’ll try. I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

“Thank you,” Erik sighed, pretending not to see Hank flinch as he slapped him on the shoulder. “Could you – could you not say anything to do with this on the phone or in text? Use a code or something? It’s that kind of situation.”

“Okay,” Hank’s eyes widened. “Whatever you say, man.”

\---

Erik got perhaps an hour’s sleep that night, in fragments. He woke up on one occasion with the pillow soaked through with tears, though he didn’t remember precisely what he’d been dreaming about. By four in the morning he decided he couldn’t stand lying around while Charles was chained up in some cold basement, so he showered, dressed and left the house without eating anything. He went straight to the airport and asked to speak to their security.

“I need access to your CCTV footage from yesterday afternoon, from the arrivals terminal,” he said, flashing his badge at the TSA officer who stared at him blearily over a cup of Starbucks. The airport mulled around them like a pot set to slow-boil, travellers dozing on their bags or arguing fruitlessly about weight restrictions with the attendants behind the baggage counters. 

“You got a warrant?” the officer asked, scratching his unshaven chin.

“Yeah, faxed it through yesterday,” Erik lied with a convincing frown. 

“I didn’t get any memo about it.”

“Christ, have you got an inbox? Go and check,” Erik pointed back towards the STAFF ONLY door behind the officer. Ten minutes later, when the mysterious disappearing search warrant didn’t appear, Erik rolled his eyes and grouched, “Look, I’ll get my admin to send a new one through in the morning. Can I just see the footage, please? I wouldn’t be here this early if this case wasn’t time-sensitive.”

“Alright, alright.”

He let Erik into a backroom with a dozen monitors and several separate computer terminals, and then left him alone. Erik went straight to the Gate 17 camera at 2:35, when Charles’ plane had been due to land.

He watched Charles leave the gate, a lump growing larger and larger in his throat like a pearl in an oyster. There he was – coat and hair looking immaculate despite the seven-and-a-half hour flight. He tracked him from one camera to another through the terminal, watched a small, grizzling child bump into Charles on the escalator and Charles turn to shoot that beaming smile at its heavy-built mother, exchange some brief words and shake her hand as they got off (Erik knew she would go on her way with a spring in her step). At the same time Erik was glancing at every passerby, convinced that this one or that one or all of them could have been the sick bastard who stole his husband, who snatched him out of thin air.

He watched Charles pause in the open ground floor of the terminal, glancing up toward the signs that pointed to the baggage carousel. And then Charles twisted his head around suddenly, as if something had grabbed his attention – perhaps as if someone had called his name. Erik leaned forward, a deep crease forming between his eyes, waiting for someone to walk onto the screen.

The image flickered and turned to static.

Erik grunted, tapping the keys to fast-forward through the glitch. The footage cleared as quickly as it had vanished, but now Charles was gone. Erik frowned, rewinding and playing slowly through the moment when Charles had looked up – and then the static. 

He grimaced and flicked through the cameras in the surrounding area. Charles was in none of them, but a moment after the last image had cleared, the view in the direction of the carousel blinked out.

A cold slab of ice slid into Erik’s gut. He checked the next camera, the one directly above the carousel, playing all three in synchronised time. There again, Charles raising his head – the image crackling into the static – clearing, and then the next turning to black and white nothing – it returned to normal, and the camera above the carousel turned to crap. It stayed that way for about three minutes, just enough time for someone in a hurry to pick up a bag, and then in reverse sequencing, each screen turned to static again, and then another one over the door and finally one facing the car park.

Erik leaned back in the cheap desk chair, scrubbing his hands down his face. Someone had corrupted all footage of Charles leaving the airport – presumably accompanied by someone else. How? Who could possibly have come in here before Erik, so specifically erased those scant seconds? This footage was kept in high-security servers, with reams of firewalls and no remote access. 

Unless the disruption had happened _as it was filmed_. An electrical interference, the like of which Erik had occasionally experimented with using his own magnetic powers.

A mutant. Whoever had escorted Charles out of the airport was a mutant.

Erik closed all the windows he had opened on the monitors, grabbed his coat and stormed out of the office, his head ablaze with horror and confusion. Why? Why would a mutant be targeting their own kind, and so brutally? Why in that case had the killer taunted him on the phone for being a mutant, expressed such intense hatred for Erik’s kind? Did he hate himself so much – did he deny that he was one of them? Is that what this was all about?

He was so perturbed he almost dented the chassis of his car as he reached it in the reddish dawn light. He sat behind the wheel and breathed in and out slowly for a few seconds. It was more than a decade since he’d seriously lost control of his power, since he’d let his emotions govern the dangerous forces within him. He needed to keep his head clear and the metal under control. Otherwise he was going to give himself away – or worse, do some real damage to his allies by accident. 

He had gained new facts. He was making progress. The killer had made a serious error in inviting Erik into his web, and entangling Charles in it too would be his fatal mistake. Erik would make absolutely sure of that. If Charles had been hurt, this guy was never going to make it as far as a trial. 

And he’d gained one other clue – Charles had picked up his bag and walked out of the airport without fuss. Whoever had come to collect him, Charles had trusted the person without hesitation. Erik didn’t know what that pointed to yet, but he could feel the compass needle twitching towards his prey. 

Firmly keeping his abilities under wraps, he started the car and headed for the station.

\---

He spent the rest of the early morning going through every bit of information the police had collected on the killer. It wasn’t much. In fact, it amounted basically to what Erik knew already: the victims didn’t show signs of having being forcefully abducted – no indication of struggles where they’d last been seen, no tranquilisers or date-rape drugs in their blood, no witnesses of anyone suspicious or unusual near the disappearance. No one had seen anything at all, in fact. The killer was a ghost. 

That or a mutant. Erik tried to think of a way he could alert his investigation team to this possibility without drawing attention to Charles’ plight. By eight-thirty Moira and the rest of the officers started to arrive and Erik had to slip back into the façade of a disinterested detective with no personal stake in the case.

Moira knew something was wrong pretty soon. He could tell by the slight quirk of her brow and the way she kept glancing at him even when they were on opposite sides of the room, like a mother keeping half an eye on her children while she busied herself with other tasks. He kept himself dispassionate towards her. Let her think the case was getting to him. They’d been partners for three years now, and Moira knew that asking him outright what he was thinking would never get her a straight answer. Just as he’d grudgingly learned from her that maybe, just maybe, not everything between humans and mutants had to be a competition. 

And he knew Moira was a good cop, too, so it was no surprise when she got up from her desk just before lunch, stood in front of their victim board with its photographs – both alive and pre-autopsy – and notes, and said, “I think I know what his signature is.”

Erik raised his head, and the conversations around the room fell quiet (except for Cassidy, the youngest on the team and the only other mutant apart from Erik, who was still nodding his head in time to his iPod).

“Yeah. He’s targeting mutants,” said Erik.

“No – not just that,” Moira tapped her chin and then pointed at each of the mutant victims one by one. “They’re all physical types, have you noticed? No telekinetics or psychics. Worthington’s wings were nearly torn off, and Dukes was half drained of his distinctive weight. Sinclair and Salvadore were considerably less mutilated then all the others, but they both have physical mutations that they could hide – Sinclair could transform into a wolf and back, while Salvadore could collapse her wings into her skin. They were both missing for a shorter length of time, too, as if he got bored and killed them faster. But here’s the thing,” she pointed at the two human victims. “These two got the same treatment. Parson, the fry cook, was a proud tattoo and piercing enthusiast. Her skin was flayed off and the piercings ripped from her body. Hawkins, the call girl, looks physically typical – we thought her mutilations were just sexual. But I just spoke to one of her colleagues, and she was a plastic surgery addict. Lips, botox, breast enlargement, labia reconstruction – the exact same pattern of wounds on her body,” she turned at last to look at Erik, her expression steeled against the horror of what she had just described. “Like he’s punishing them for having bodies he doesn’t deem natural.”

“Fucker,” Cassidy muttered, having finally removed his headphones to listen.

“That might be the only thing he hasn’t done to them,” Moira said grimly.

“Just one problem,” Cassidy winced, raising his hand tentatively. “I’ve got this woman who might be another victim – maybe earlier than all the others. It’s a mutant who fits the profile, and she was last seen five days before the call girl’s body turned up. Three weeks ago.”

“What’s her power?” Moira asked, soundly faintly disappointed.

“Telepath,” said Cassidy, holding up a handful of printed sheets. “Emma Frost, a parole officer, except she quit her job just before she disappeared. Currently divorced and living alone. Her landlord reported her when she didn’t pay her rent.”

“If she just quit her job, maybe she’s taken off for a holiday,” Erik pointed out. His tie felt too tight and he was suddenly, desperately craving a smoke. If Moira was right and the killer was targeting physical mutations, then he wouldn’t have the compulsion to kill Charles like the other victims – if Cassidy was right and a telepath was the first victim, then Charles was in more danger than ever. 

“I doubt it. Landlord told the cops her apartment is pristine, not a sock out of place. But her car is missing, and the registration was due to run out two weeks ago. Wherever that car is, someone hasn’t bothered to renew it.”

“Put out an APB on the car,” Moira ordered the nearest officer, crossing the room to look at the file over Cassidy’s shoulder. “Silver Lexus G300, made 2003,” she reeled off a plate number, and then looked up suddenly. “Erik, you know anything about this?”

“What?” Erik snapped, too hastily. “Why would I?”

Moira frowned. “I just thought, a mutant in law enforcement – you might know her.”

“Oh,” Erik got his expression under control. “No, I’ve never heard of her. Sorry.”

He could feel Moira’s eyes on him for the rest of the morning.

He came back from lunch early, unable to stand sitting around with his fellow officers, cracking jokes and swapping stories from home. He sat at his computer and checked his emails, feeling bile rise in his throat when he saw there was one from Charles. He glanced around to make sure the office was empty. 

**> hey handsome, what’s the goss? Tell me a little something about how the investigation’s going**

Erik resisted the urge to throw a chair through the computer and then crush its composite not-plastic parts into a tiny ball. He flexed his fingers. His instinct was to delete the email and not look back, but keeping this sicko happy might be the only thing keeping Charles alive right now. He had to give him something. Something that at the same time wouldn’t compromise the investigation. He began to type,

**Moira**

He broke it off, deleting that and writing. **Agent MacTaggert believes you’re choosing your targets because you think their bodies are unnatural.**

He sat and waited, though he knew he was just torturing himself. Within a minute, a new message appeared in his inbox. He clicked on it before he could have any hesitation. 

**> Agent MacTaggert is a clever girl**

Erik’s breath hitched in his throat. No – had Moira been right? That was what this guy was doing? What was going on in the bastard’s head? Maybe Charles, with his books and his longitudinal studies and his gene-environment interactions, could have given him a clue. But Erik was going to have to do this one on his own. He replied,

**Put me on the phone to him and I will give you everything we’ve got**

He sat with his entwined fists pressed tight to his mouth. The rest of the team started to filter back into the office. Cassidy was talking about his cousin’s wingsuit at the top of his voice. Moira already had a file in her hand and her mouth was moving as she read through it under her breath.

Erik stared at the little **(0)** beside his inbox. He willed it to change. He willed his phone to ring, for Charles’ voice to be at the other end, telling him everything was going to be fine. 

But the killer didn’t reply. 

\---

The investigation made only one breakthrough that day. Moira cross-referenced all the security footage of roads surrounding the CCTV deadzones where the bodies had been dropped off, and a silver Lexus G300 was spotted in four out of six of them. The license plate could be seen in one shot, confirming it as Emma Frost’s. Everything began to focus on the days leading up to the parole officer’s disappearance. A photo of her was pinned up on their victim board, an ice-eyed blonde in a white hoodie. The team began tracking down all the offenders she had supervised before she quit her job, since she was the only victim who had had her material possessions stolen by the killer. One by one, her wards were ruled out as suspects, but it was a long list. 

Erik stayed late, going through everything they had, looking for something the other investigators might have missed. He thought he was alone until Moira appeared beside him. 

He jumped, mashing the keyboard and leaving a string of random characters on the screen. She was holding a fat turkey sandwich from the convenience store down the road.

“What’s this?”

“Your dinner.” 

When he didn’t take it out of her hand she placed it on his keyboard. “Charles will give me hell if I let you starve yourself while he’s away.”

“Yeah,” Erik muttered, putting the sandwich aside. He didn’t feel the slightest bit hungry. “Thanks.”

“If it’s still here when I get in tomorrow morning, I’ll have the boys hold you down and stick a feeding tube down your throat,” she warned, wagging her finger as she picked up her bag and headed for the exit. “Get some sleep, okay?”

“You too,” he answered automatically. As soon as the door had swung shut behind her, he pushed the sandwich into his wastepaper bin.

The office was empty, the lights switched off in the corridor outside. On the street beyond, Erik could hear clubbers whooping and laughing as they made their way into town in their high-heels and tight-buttoned shirts. Erik’s head was throbbing. He pulled open his third desk drawer and pushed aside notebooks, music CDs and spare USB drives to find the photo at the bottom. 

It was of Charles and him at their wedding, Erik squinting against the sun and Charles awkwardly holding a champagne glass that the photographer had put in his hand for artistic purposes. Erik could feel the titanium of his wedding band whisper on his finger, engraved on the inside with ‘S’ for ‘south’ while Charles’ matching band had the magnetically polar ‘N’ (Raven’s idea – Erik had thought it was cheap but Charles called it delightful, and Erik was easily won over). Eight years ago. 

Eight years was not enough. A hundred was not enough. He would not let him go for every other soul on Earth.

His phone began to ring.

Erik jumped so hard the metal frame of the photograph twisted and the glass cracked, cutting a hair-thin line between his face and Charles’. He dropped it in the desk drawer and grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Hi,” Charles croaked. 

\---

Erik made a noise that was half a gulp for air and half a sob that was totally not appropriate for a veteran police detective. His hand was so sweaty the phone was slipping out of it, and he had to cup the mouthpiece with his other palm. “Charles – are you – say yes if you’re okay, just stay silent if he’s hurt you-”

“It’s on speakerphone,” Charles said, and there was a miraculous, beautiful note of laughter in his voice. “But I am okay. He says you’ve got thirty seconds.”

There was the faintest echo to his voice – so he was probably still in that damned basement. Good. The longer he stayed there, the more likely they’d find the place.

Erik hunched over the phone, squeezing his eyes shut. “Love, I need to – I’m sorry, but I’ve got to ask you something only you’d know, to make sure this isn’t – that you’re not a shapeshifter or something-”

“Yes, of course,” Charles said. His voice was raspy but there wasn’t any noticeable shudder or whimper of pain. Erik chose to believe that it was the truth, that he was okay. It was the only way to keep his brain from collapsing into the inferno of rage and hate building inside his skull. “It’s nice to hear your voice,” Charles added, when Erik didn’t immediately reply.

“You too. Um,” Erik hadn’t thought of a question yet. His mind skimmed through flashes of their life together, flashes of disasters and frustrations and glory days long past. He wanted to think of something cheerful. “Who was Cain?”

“My stepbrother,” Charles answered at once. “That’s a bit easy.”

“Oh, yeah,” Erik had actually momentarily forgotten that. He’d never met Cain Marko. “I meant the second one.”

“The rat I trained in my fifth year,” Charles said after a brief moment, and Erik could hear him smiling, and imagined his wrists bleeding against the edge of the cuffs. “He chewed through the cord to your guitar amp.”

“You were a crap trainer,” Erik huffed. 

“Still am. You being case in point,” Charles voice shook a little. “Erik he’s going to hang up – he wants me to tell you, he knows the investigation has their eyes on Frost – he says you have to lead them away, make them drop their interest in her, or he’ll – or – no, fuck you, tell him yourself-” Charles’ voice faded at the end, and then the line went dead.

Erik clutched the phone to his ear, opening his eyes slowly. 

\---

Around midnight the computer screen started to blur in front of him and he decided the roads would be quiet enough for him to drive home in his sleep-deprived state. He felt drugged as he walked through the apartment door and dropped his keys in the bowl. He peeled off his clothes and dropped into bed. 

The second his head hit the pillow it started buzzing. What was he doing, sleeping when his husband was in trouble? He should just take the car and start searching the city, looking through every building old enough to contain a gas radiator like that. No matter how unlikely that he’d stumble across it by chance, any little chance was worth it, wasn’t it?

No. He needed to stay sharp. But he’d do one last inbox check, just in case. 

There was an email from Hank waiting for him on the laptop. He opened it with bile in his throat, convinced that Hank would be apologetically saying, _sorry buddy, I tried._ Instead, it read:

**Hey man, that shit you dumped at my house the other night, I sent it for dry cleaning and it’s ready to be picked up. I left it under Raven’s nickname.**

So Hank had at least taken his request for secrecy seriously, thank God. Below the message was a link to an encrypted site. Erik opened it and was prompted for a password: he typed “mystique” and a block of text loaded. 

_“My contact came through. He’s got a number of pings on Charles’ phone in the last couple of days, all from the same tower within the city. I thought Charles was in Paris? Anyway, my contact says the emails were probably sent within 0.9 miles of the tower. Location below: it’s some big development district. Look, I know it’s none of my business, but whatever’s going on with you and Charles, don’t do anything overboard, right? Talk to someone, work it out. You two need each other.”_

Erik wrinkled his nose. If he got his hands on the murderer, oh, he’d show Hank ‘overboard’. They’d have to sieve the guy’s remains just to find enough teeth for dental records. 

He wrote down the tower’s location on the back of a receipt and tried to think of his next move. He couldn’t start googling the location from home – if this guy could intercept phone calls and emails, he might be able to see Erik’s browser history as well. Too risky. He’d go out, find some twenty-four hour cyber café and use that instead. And then?

He decided to tackle that first. By the time he was back in his clothes and behind the wheel of the car, Erik was fully awake again. 0.9 mile diameter. He calculated quickly in his head; something over two and a half a miles squared. He could probably stand at that tower and feel the distinctive pull of Charles’ particular set of keys, watch and fillings. Maybe could even hear Charles’ mind if the serine inhibitors were wearing off. 

It took about half an hour on google maps to check the exterior of every building in the development block, and scant minutes longer to figure out that all the offices were derelict. There was only one building in the cellphone tower’s range that was older than a couple of years, set back behind a tower of new offices. That’s where the killer was. That’s where Charles would be.

He wanted to drive out there right now – but no, rushing into a situation was a rookie mistake. This killer had taken down four mutants, two of whom could fly, one who spat balls of fiery acid, one who could hold back a semi and one who had teeth bigger than Hank’s. This guy knew how to deal with people like Erik, and even with the element of surprise he would have Charles at his mercy. Erik needed help.

He managed to figure out the building’s address and hunted down a better picture of it. He began to plan the assault, how many men, how best to get in without alerting anyone inside. 

He fell asleep at the desk of the cyber café and was woken by the student working behind the coffee bar. He went home to sleep restlessly for a couple of hours, waking with his head whirling with plans. When he got up it was still pre-dawn, but he climbed out of bed and forced eggs and toast down his throat, showered and then called Moira.

“Erik,” she mumbled down the line. “It’s… really early.”

“I just got a call from an officer over the other side of town. Frost’s silver Lexus was spotted parked in the middle of an unleased office block. I think we should bust in there straight away, get him by surprise.”

“Okay, slow down,” he could hear Moira pushing herself upright and sculling a glass of water to wake herself. “Why’d this cop call you directly?”

“I don’t know, but the point is, we need to move fast,” Erik insisted. It occurred to him that Moira didn’t know their killer have the power to disrupt security cameras and who knew what else. “And I think we should bring the anti-mutant squad – this guy could have captives inside the building, and if one of them panics and starts shooting laser beams we need to be prepared.”

“Alright,” Moira was shaking a sleepy slur out of her voice, but he could hear her getting out of bed. “Give me half an hour to get ready and get to the office, I’ll start calling the mutant expert boys as I go. You contact the armoury and get them to prep the kind of gear we’ll need.”

“You’ve got fifteen minutes, and we’ll meet a couple of blocks from the location. I’m texting you the address now.”

\---

_”Police! Surrender all weapons! This is the police!”_

Moira was at the back of the pack, donned out in the same style of flak jacket and helmet – both reinforced against plasma-beams and lightning and several other common kinetic attacks that mutants could generate. She was carrying the same .45 that she’d been issued when they gave her a badge and told her to get out there and clean up the streets. She had never fired it outside of the practise range. 

Erik was just ahead, though the captain of the anti-mutant squad refused to let him lead the charge. He had a jacket and helmet to match hers, but was not carrying a sidearm. Bullets couldn’t hurt him, of course, and guns would be turned against their owners.

The look in his eye had scared Moira. She had never seen Erik so bloodthirsty. She thought of him as the peacemaker when the boys at the station got antsy with each other – for the first time she wondered where he got his temperance. What would he be like in a world where he hadn’t learned to restrain himself?

“Clear!” the leader officer yelled, and there was a “Clear!” from someone in the next room. The team were heading deeper into the building, but Erik – lagging slightly behind them – suddenly turned and sprinted down a flight of concrete stairs. Moira followed at a run, hindered by the weapon she held in front.

“Lehnsherr!” she barked, reluctant to seem more familiar with him in front of their colleagues from the armed squad. “Stay with the group!”

He ignored her. They passed empty, unlit rooms, doors hanging open and rusting on their hinges. Erik shone his torch into each one and then moved on. What was he looking for? Did he want to catch this killer alone? Moira knew he was taking the case a bit personally, but this was downright reckless.

The fluorescent lamps led into a room at the end of the hall. The door looked like solid steel. Erik kicked it open with a single blow, the inch-thick bolt snapping right off. He disappeared inside and Moira followed, raising her gun.

But the small concrete room beyond was empty. Erik stood spinning in the centre, his face white under the glare of the halogens. There was nothing here but an old radiator, paint flecking off it at the ends.

“He’s not here!” Erik bellowed, apparently to the world at large. His voice echoed in the tiny space. “No! _NO!”_

His face twisted into an ugly mask and with a sudden gasp he lunged and grabbed the radiator, ripping it right out of the wall with a scream of metal pipes. He hurled it onto the ground so hard that concrete flakes burst in all directions. With a roar, he slammed his foot down on the radiator again and again, imprinting his boot on it until it was just a warped curl of its previous shape.

“Erik,” Moira, with more than a little hesitation, reached out to touch his shoulder. “Erik, there’s still the rest of the building. We’ll get him.”

Erik turned towards her and his face – God, she couldn’t believe – spattered with red blotches of flushed skin, his lips pressed together so hard they were just a white line, his eyes in a tight squint, his fists shuddering by his sides. There was a red streak of blood above one cheekbone, from the slash of a concrete flake. He didn’t seem to notice it. 

Before Moira could figure out what to say that wouldn’t result in her getting splattered across the wall in a hail of metal shrapnel, the walkie-talkie hooked over her pocket crackled into life.

“Detective! Hurry, please!”

Moira thumbed the button. “I’m on my way.”

“No – Detective Lehnsherr, we need Lehnsherr!”

Moira looked at Erik. The colour on his face was starting to even out, and he pushed past her and dashed back along the corridor, Moira keeping up as best she could. 

They found the team in a high-roofed workshop at the end of the building. Moira gaped as she entered. All the windows were covered in newspaper, and plastic sheets were crumpled in one corner. She could see runnels of blood inside them. Tables were laden with tools, scraps and beams of metal, jars of rivets and screws. Chains hung in loops from reinforced hooks, and diagrams were pinned up on the wooden external wall of the building. 

In the corner was something Moira couldn’t get her head around – she could think only of the eel traps her grandfather had used on his farm when she was a girl, wicker cages with tightening tunnels as entrances that could not be used as exits without the animal tearing itself open. Except this one was huge, and made of steel, and had hinges and spikes lined up between the bars to puncture the prey from every angle – and there was prey, there was someone inside the cage, dear God - but Moira couldn’t see the victim through the crowd of the squad, who had abandoned their weapons and were hanging off the frame of spikes, holding onto it like drowning men to a life ring. Moira realised that if they let go, the spikes would slam inwards and the victim would end up as mincemeat.

“He’s here, kid, hang on,” one of the squad called. “Lehnsherr’s a human jaws-of-life, he’s gonna get you out.”

“Help!” a voice Moira didn’t recognise begged. It was muffled as if gagged, but she recognised its youth and downtown accent. The sort of kid she would have shaken down for spray-cans a few years ago.

Erik charged forward, cracking his knuckles, and then stretched out his hands. She saw the vein in his temple that always bulged when he was focusing his powers. She had to admit it gave her a thrill. Charles had once said – it had been the office Christmas party a couple of years back – that Erik had the power in him to bring down a skyscraper by ripping apart its steel reinforcements. She’d only been partnered with him for a few months at that stage, and she’d looked at him across the room, talking basketball with his sleeves rolled up like all the other officers, and something in her had whispered, _obviously_.

Now his face pinked a little, his fingers spread wide, and he grunted, “I’ve got it – step back, I’ve got it.”

The squad let go of the cage cautiously and then began to peel away, staring in shock as their zips and watches strained weakly towards Erik. The spring-loaded spikes surrounding the cage creaked as Erik stepped closer, but he held one hand outstretched and began to gesture with the other. The cage broke apart one steel beam at a time, the pieces floating towards Erik and then dropping with clanks onto the floor.

Finally he stepped right up to the cage and began to lay his hands on the more delicate mechanisms that were close to the kid inside. He was just some young bloke in a black sweatshirt, a strange green tinge to his skin. Another mutant victim – but luckier than the others. He was whimpering and crying and Moira suddenly realised that a part of the contraption – a ladder of spikes – was piercing right through a very long, discoloured tongue protruding from his mouth. Erik gently bent the metal out and the kid collapsed forward into his arms.

“Okay, okay, we got you. Come on,” Erik whispered, rubbing the kid’s back. He raised his head. “Will some call the damn standby ambulance? Don’t worry, kid, you’re safe now. What’s your name?” 

The kid mumbled around his swollen tongue. “My mates call me Toad. Y-you’re a mutant too?”

“Yeah, I’m a mutant. Are you hurt anywhere else? Can you walk?”

Toad didn’t seem hurt bad, but he took a couple of steps and Erik had to grab him before he fell. He was in shock. 

“H-he said he was a mutant,” Toad whimpered. “Why would he do that to me? Why? He didn’t want anything, he just wanted to hurt me. Why would he do that?”

“We’re going to get him,” Erik promised. “We’ll make sure he never hurts anyone else,” his eyes lifted to meet Moira’s gaze and the look in them was neither triumphant nor determined. He looked broken. But he voice repeated steadily, “We’ll get him.”


	4. the box / the breakthrough

Charles managed to sleep that first night, even if leaning your head back against the edges of a radiator had to be the least comfortable place he’d ever tried to rest (and he had spent the night under a bush once after a party in his second year). He awoke shivering with cold and his bladder aching. He could hear someone crying. He sat up, straining against his bonds. He was listening to it through a concrete ceiling, but he was still pretty sure that wasn’t the gunman.

Someone else – another hostage? Charles’ first instinct was to scream through the gag as loud as he could, but if the person upstairs was in as much trouble as he was… well, he didn’t really want to attract the gunman’s attention.

It also added weight to something that had only occurred to him slowly, since thoughts of escape had mostly occupied his mind since he’d arrived. His captor wasn’t just some bitter ex-cop trying to get a big paycheck from ransom money. He was too comfortable with what he was doing, too practical. He’d done this before. And he still hadn’t told Charles what it was he wanted from Erik or the police department – surely he’d have tried to gain Charles’ cooperation by promising him he’d be safe as long as the money was paid?

There was a slimy, gut-wrenching possibility that was growing the longer it fed on his fears. This wasn’t just greed, this wasn’t just money. This was the bastard who got his kicks grabbing vulnerable kids off the streets and turning them into canvases for his dark compulsions. Charles had cheerfully gotten into a car a goddamn serial killer.

Some telepath he was.

Speaking of which, it had been hours since his last dose. He closed his eyes, visualised pressing his fingers to his forehead and stretched his mind through the walls of his prison. He could see the distant glow of two minds, one confused and terrified, one strangely blank and glassy, its multiple layers each inscribed with a different frequency that made it hard for Charles to focus on the whole picture.

He felt a jolt as the gunman’s mind suddenly slammed shut against his, like a strobe going off in his face. He pulled back at once, but soon there came heavy footsteps on the stairs outside and light flooded the small room as the door slammed open against the wall. The gunmen – in a dark grey suit with no tie instead of the police uniform – crouched in front of him. He was carrying a small bag in one hand.

“Trying to read my mind, pansy?” the gunman grabbed his lapels. “Go on. Go ahead and try it.”

Charles glared at him, but hey, if the bastard was so arrogant – he narrowed his eyes and pushed his tendrils out as fierce as he could. They skimmed as if through a hologram of a mind, made of flickering flashes of light projected through smoke. It was like nothing Charles had ever felt in his considerable, and very powerful, experiences as a telepath.

His surprise must have shown on his face. The gunman’s face twisted in a cold, closed-mouth smile and he tapped the side of his head.

“My mind’s different, little freak. You’re never getting in here. Now,” he pulled out the cardboard box with Charles’ pills and gestured with them. “If you take this without any fuss, I’ll let you have both of these,” he pulled a bedpan out of the bag, and then a bottle of spring water. Charles wondered how he had never in his life appreciated such simple things. He nodded without hesitation. The gunman reached for the buckles of the gag.

Charles took the pill, and let the gunman tip most of the water bottle into his mouth. He deliberately stopped himself, not sure how much longer he could hold back his pressing need to urinate. He found himself flushing when the gunman pulled down his boxers and held the bedpan between his legs while he levered himself up to use it. But the man made no show of it, and pulled his pants up again afterwards without a word. So at least getting groped or worse was one thing Charles wasn’t going to have to worry about. He didn’t pretend he wasn’t relieved.

He let the gag go on again without complaint. Defiance had got him nowhere so far.

\---

The cold, his hunger and the stiffness in his limbs only got worse, but at least he was left alone after that. He dozed as much as he could, just to escape the discomfort of the world right now, occasionally awoken by clanks or the vibration of machinery from somewhere upstairs. When the gunman returned hours later, he wasn’t just carrying the hated pills and the water bottle, but Charles’ smartphone.

He stood over Charles, dangling the phone in front of his face. The contact list with Erik’s numbers had been brought up on the screen. Charles found he couldn’t get enough breath through his nose.

“Be a good boy and you can talk to him,” the gunman said.

Charles nodded frantically. Before he dialled and put the phone to Charles’ ear, the gunman gave him a clear message for Erik, about someone named Frost and the police investigation. Charles’ instinct was to tell Erik not to obey, but, well – he knew Erik would do what he wanted in that respect.

Oh, God, hearing his husband’s voice – even the exhaustion and bubbling anger in Erik’s tone was the most beautiful thing Charles had ever experienced. He kept his own voice steady. He thought of packed lecture halls and rows of watching students, of clusters of fellow scientists listening to his latest findings or new research proposals. He could not break down while Erik was listening. Erik was his only ally right now, his weapon in the outside world, and Charles had to keep him in top form. His husband would not be able to stay calm and think rationally if he heard Charles blubbering.

He still wouldn’t give the whole message, though.

The strength the phonecall gave him didn’t last long. What felt like only a couple of hours later – though frankly, Charles no longer had any idea what time of the day it was – the footsteps returned, heavy on the stairs. The gunman burst in with a roar, his face displaying the strongest emotion that Charles had seen from him so far. It was particularly strange to see that emotion without feeling it telepathically as well. Charles hunched down as the man’s hands cracked against his head and face, open-handed and then, at least once, with a closed fist.

_”What’s her name?”_ he bellowed. _”What’s your sister’s nickname?”_

Charles groaned through the gag and a split lip, his head throbbing. He couldn’t bloody talk if he wanted to! He could feel the sharp scrape of a nail and saw a flash of blood out of the corner of his eye. Finally the gunman wrenched at the buckles and threw the gag aside, grabbing Charles’ hair with both hands and forcing them face-to-face.

_”What’s her name?”_

“R-Raven,” Charles spat out a dribble of blood gushing from a bitten tongue.

“Her other name, you turd!” he slammed Charles’ head back against the radiator and Charles felt his scalp split. He couldn’t think what the man meant, or why he would care – his instinct screamed not to tell him anything about Raven, not to let him hurt his sister. But Raven was somewhere on a river barge under a distant blue sky across the far side of the globe, she was safe, and his head hurt so much-

“Mystique,” he spluttered. It was the name she’d given herself in her most radical mutant activism phase, after the engagement to Hank McCoy broke down and she’d taken solace in her hate of the humans who stared and mocked every time she stepped out the door.

The gunman tilted Charles' head, forcing him to look into those wild green eyes. “How’d he do it?” he snarled. “How’d he make a wall I couldn’t get through? No one can do that!”

“I swear I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Charles pleaded.

The gunman shoved his head back once more and then got up and stalked out, leaving the gag in the corner of the room and the lights on. Charles’ eyes prickled with tears and he whimpered into one knee as the pain of the bruise on the back of his head swelled up.

Minutes later, his captor was back, this time with the gun and a face like a corpse that had died with unfinished business. Before Charles knew what was going on he was unlocking one of the cuffs.

Charles made a grab for the gun as the cuff fell away. The gunman snatched it out of reach and shoved the blade of his foot against Charles’ throat, pinning him back against the sharp edges of the radiator. Charles pried at his ankle, heaving for breath through the tiniest gap left in his throat.

“Don’t,” the gunman warned, “do that again,” he held out the key to the other cuff, reducing the pressure against Charles’ throat. “Unlock yourself, then put the cuffs back on behind your back.”

He manhandled Charles up the stairs and out a side door into a cloud-covered night. Charles could barely walk on his bad knee, not to mention after more than a full day sitting on the hard floor. He scuffed his feet on the broken concrete and almost fell flat on his face at least once occasion, the gunman just managing to catch one bound wrist as he plunged forward. He was shoved head-first into the boot of the Lexus, and the gag strapped around his head once more.

_I hate you_ , Charles tried to project, _Whatever happens to me, you’ll get what’s coming. You’ll get yours._

The boot was slammed shut on his sneer. The engine purred into life and they slid away into the night.

\---

There was something of a party atmosphere around the station - well, perhaps a lynching party, Moira mused to herself as she watched one of the rookies high five the members of the investigative team as they came in the door. Forensics were streaming in and out, even pulling in off-duty experts to cover the dis-assembly of the killer's hideout. Moira's voice was going hoarse from directing her team – they needed someone to the hospital to interview the mutant kid they'd rescued, someone to check any nearby CCTV footage to figure out which direction Frost's Lexus had gone in, someone to liaise with the various forensics teams, someone to up the pace of searching Frost's contacts, someone to canvas the surrounding office areas for witnesses, someone to track the purchase of all the tools and materials in the killer's blood-stained workshop...

On top of that, she had not failed to notice that Erik had barely spoken a word since he escorted Toad into the arms of the ambulance crew. She thought irritably that whatever was going on with him, she didn't have time to coddle him. But when she saw him disappear into the bathroom mid-morning and not come out, her concern started putting up a serious battle against her impatience.

_He's a grown man, he doesn't want me drawing attention to him in front of his colleagues,_ she told herself. And yeah, it was an upsetting case - they were all going to find it hard to keep their breakfasts down as the details of the killer's torture house came in. But then again, she'd never known Erik to be squeamish before. Not in the worst homicides they'd covered together, not even when it was kids or old ladies.

She wrestled with her dilemma for a couple of minutes, but when he still hadn't come out of the bathroom her concern won out. She bandied a couple more instructions in Cassidy's direction and then hurried down the corridor and slipped through the swinging door.

Erik was bent over the furthest sink, his tie undone and hanging loose from his collar. He'd splashed water on his blotchy face, and it was dripping off his chin.

"You wanna take lunch early?" she asked.

Erik apparently hadn't even heard her come in. He jerked like she'd slapped him and turned cold eyes on her. "The ladies' room is down the hall, Moira."

"Look," Moira took a couple of steps closer. "You need to clue me in here. What's happening you?"

"I'm fine, MacTaggert," he barked, shoulders rising like a threatened animal. "The sight of that kid just got to me, okay? Jesus, am I not allowed to feel some compassion now?"

"Yeah, bit of blood, and we all know you're scared of needles and itty-bitty spiders too," Moira shot back, stepping closer with her arms held out in supplication. "Is it - are you sick?" oh God, that was probably it. Stage three prostate cancer or something. He was probably trying to do chemo on the weekends so no one found out. Christ, no wonder he hadn't been eating.

"Yeah, I'm sick," he muttered, wiping his chin and turning away like he didn't have to energy to fight. "Can I have some quality time with the urinal now, please?"

Except that he was lying. She knew he was lying. He wasn't even that good a liar. She managed to get a hold of his hand while reaching into the pocket of her sports jacket, the same one she'd been wearing at the raid this morning. She squeezed his fingers reassuringly, and when he tried to pull away she tightened her grip, pulled his hand down towards the sink and whipped out the plastic cuff-tie from the stash in her pocket, locking him to the porcelain drain ring before he knew what was happening.

"Moira-" he realised what she'd done and strained against the plastic tie. "This is not fucking funny!"

Moira stepped back to the cleaning cupboard and grabbed the 'not in service' sign, opening the door just long enough to stick it to the outside before she turned back to him, her hands on her hips. "Tell me what's going on," she ordered.

"Fuck you. I'll goddamn report this," he growled, prying at the tie on his wrist. When he couldn't break it with brute strength, he reached his hand toward her and she felt every speck of metal on her clothes hauled forward. She grabbed the nearest stall door and hung on tight.

"Moira! Cut me loose!"

"Not until you help me get your head back in the game!" she shot back, clinging to the stall with all her might.

_"There is nothing going on! Stop this bullshit!"_

There was a quiet cough. They both turned to see a courier sticking his head in the door, holding a package and an electronic tablet.

"Sorry, am I interrupting? Mr Cassidy said you were in here…"

Moira smiled in what she hoped was a convincing manner. "We're just reenacting a crime scene. Can you come back later?"

"I just need a signature," the courier said. "The package is for Mr Lehnsherr."

Moira looked at Erik, still trying to wriggle his way out of the plastic tie, and signed the courier's tablet for him. She closed the door firmly behind the messenger and put the package on the edge of the sink, turning back to her partner.

Erik's face had gone a delirious shade of beige. His eyes were locked on the package. Moira glanced at it. "Do you want me to open this?" she asked cautiously, waiting for him to protest. When he didn't, she took out her keys, slit the tape and folded up the lid of the box.

Her hands went to her mouth. She recoiled backwards a step, just managing to curb the reaction before she could stumble any further.

"Please," Erik said in a voice that was barely more than a rasp. "Tell me it's something he can live without."

Moira looked at him. There was no surprise in his face, just utter despair. She pulled a latex glove out of the sterile bag in her pocket and turned back to the two fingers snugly taped down inside the box - the fourth and fifth digits of someone's left hand. Carefully, holding the edges to keep from smearing any possible prints, she pried the grey band off the ring finger. It looked like titanium.

She felt her body go numb as she saw what she was looking for: a curling 'N' inscribed on the inside of the ring. She'd never seen this ring up close, but she'd seen its mate plenty of times. Erik took it off whenever he was handling corpses.

"This is Charles' wedding ring," she said to Erik. She felt like huge, merciless hands were constricting her chest. "Erik why... why didn't you tell me?"

"Charles came home from France early and I was... I was late to the airport and that bastard... he took him, Moira. He's intercepting our calls. Our emails. I couldn't risk you telling anyone else," Erik croaked. "He told me I had to spy on the investigation, disrupt it if I could, or he'd... or he'd..." he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "I thought I had gotten around him this morning."

"That's who you were looking for in the basement?" she whispered. "Charles?"

"He was there. I was sent photographs. But this guy..." he shook his head. "He knows everything we do."

Moira stripped off her glove inside-out and knotted it with the ring hidden inside.

"He's not dead," she said sharply. She glanced into the box again. "It's just two fingers, Erik. He's alive," she strode over and cut the plastic tie with the army knife on her key-chain. She grabbed his shoulders. "I won't tell anyone else, not yet, but we've got to work together. Alright?"

She felt like she was clawing away from a precipice. But this was her job every day, and if it was someone right here in front of her who needed it – no part of her wanted to run away from that.

\---

“Detectives,” Cassidy yelped as soon as they came out of the bathroom, Moira carrying the package under her arm. She wasn’t sure what to do with it yet – her instinct was to take Charles’ fingers to forensics, tell them it came from the workshop and get them to check the ring for prints (DNA testing of the tissue would take days at best, and Charles was unlikely to be on the database anyway). And it wasn’t like she could just put the box in the tearoom fridge upstairs. Yet suppose they found Charles today? If they got the fingers on ice now, there was a chance they could be reattached.

Erik, though he’d composed his appearance back into the gruff, confident cop they were all used to, had yet to look into the box or refer to it in any way. It was clear that all he cared about was getting Charles’ back alive and psychologically whole. 

“Detectives!” Cassidy repeated. “We’ve got a suspect, we’ve got a suspect!”

He sounded like it was a prize, something they should be popping streamers over, and Moira saw Erik flinch out of the corner of her eye. She strode over to the young investigator. “Let’s stay open-minded here,” she told him. “What’s your evidence?”

“Okay, okay,” Cassidy was practically bouncing. “Lyle Albertine, one of Emma Frost’s wards – thirty-six years old, finished his parole about three months ago. No criminal record until his only conviction back in 2007. He spent eighteen months in jail as an accessory,” he took a breath, clearly about to reveal his trump card, “in the murder of May Florez.”

“No,” Moira snatched the file from his hand and Erik’s head twitched up. She flicked through it. “I don’t remember his name at all.”

“He plead guilty at the start,” Cassidy explained. “Basically no media coverage. But he was the one who filmed the whole thing.”

Moira braced herself as she flicked through the file. May Florez was one of the last cases Erik had worked on before they became partners. Florez had been a journalist intern, ambitious and very smart, who’d infiltrated an anti-mutant activist group to get coverage of their innermost meetings. She was a mutant herself – some very inoffensive power, like giving people good dreams – and she’d been caught. Things became heated, a number of extremists in the group got out of control, and she’d been beaten to death. The media had absolutely pounced – she was an honours graduate from immigrant parents who’d worked their way up from nothing, and she photographed well. It was a perfect storm of public outcry, and even Senator Kelly had complained that it was creating too much sympathy for the mutant cause.

Moira remembered that Erik had broken a lot of car door handles while the trial was on, some months after the murder and soon after they’d started working together. The lynchpin of the evidence had been a tape that had shown several of the perps during the attack itself; there was no way they could escape conviction once that came to light. Erik had been commended, promoted into Moira’s range and given to her as a partner to replace a retiring detective. It was the predecessor to a long line of high-profile cases that would prove their worth together. They had become a nice symbol of mutant-human teamwork, the sort of great publicity that the city’s police had been desperately searching for, with their history of abuses and corruption against mutants. Still, even as the poster children of a more accepting future, Moira liked to think that she and Erik had earned their reputation on merit.

Cassidy was beaming at her, ever proud of his own work. He waved his print-outs.

“He’s got a history of anti-mutant activism, and he hasn’t been heard from by anyone in a while. He was supposed to be living with a friend after he finished parole, but she says he left a note and disappeared about a month ago. And get this,” Cassidy started shoving into Moira’s hands pages of print-outs from the internet with various lines highlighted. “Your theory that the killer is targeting people because of their ‘unnatural’ bodies?” he did the air quotes and everything, then resumed searching for more notes. “Albertine worked as a struggling model for years, but just when he got a contract with a major firm, the Anti-Discrimination Bill got passed and he was dropped so they could fill the mutant employment quota. The whole industry started favouring mutant body types after that – he’s written dozens of blog posts that mention it, it’s clearly a sore spot for him. And then – and then-” he had no more notes to push towards Moira, but he jiggled on the balls of his feet, his arms crossed, “he became an artist after he got too old to model. I looked up that online too – it’s mostly sculptures. Lots of metalwork.”

Moira shook her head, half in disbelief. “Talk about fitting like a glove. What do you think, Erik? You remember this guy?”

“I remember him,” Erik shrugged. His head was bent over his folded arms, chewing at the inside of his cheek. He didn’t sound confident about it, but she supposed he had other things on his mind. She’d spent so long making it in a man’s world, laying down spikes and fighting to be noticed, she had lost all sense of when a comforting touch or a sympathetic word was appropriate and when it was unwanted pity. Come to think of it, beyond handshakes she didn’t think she’d seen anyone – except maybe Charles – touch Erik as a sign of friendship. She wouldn’t have a clue how to breach those barriers.

At the same time, she resisted the urge to give Cassidy a pat on the head, which by his expression was what he was expecting. “I gotta admit it’s pretty compelling.”

Erik tapped the top of the file, “Cassidy – get a recent pic of Albertine, do a photo line-up for Toad at the hospital, see if he picks this guy out. Moira and I are going to get started on Albertine’s known haunts, figure out where he’s been hiding for the last month. He still needs to eat and shit – somebody, somewhere has to have seen him.”

\---

Working helped. 

Erik shouldn’t have been surprised how much working helped. It had helped Dad after all, after Erik’s mother died. It hadn’t helped Erik of course, seeing his father sometimes less than two hours worth in a whole week, while Erik kept the bathrooms clean and cooked his own meals and Dad’s too sometimes, until the boy spent longer and longer days away from the stagnating husk of his childhood home and one day just didn’t go back at all. Nothing had helped Erik much, not school or sex or the fights or all the things he’d done that he’d never, ever tell Charles about (he knew Charles could press one psychic palm to the steel in his mind but would not pry). Nothing had helped, but sometimes – often enough – there had been that one teacher who made him finish that one essay, or that one friend who’d let him sleep on the couch instead of going into town to brawl. 

Somehow he’d lived through it, like driftwood. He’d woken up one day and realised Dad was in the ground, but it was a mercy for them both, and he was training to do something worthwhile, and there was this beautiful, clever, endlessly cheerful man in front of him who _wanted_ him. Erik had got through the storm and beached on golden sands under a blue sky, and after a while he couldn’t imagine where else he could have landed.

But now – now the sky was black and the wind was rising and the trees were breaking and the storm was inside him and working was the only thing that kept the whole island from being sucked down into the bowels of the typhoon. 

At least Moira wasn’t watching him of the corner of her eyes anymore. No need, since she’d wrung out the truth like a good detective. She’d even gone down to the service station and come back with a pound of ice, into which she’d surreptitiously tucked the plastic evidence bag with Charles’ fingers. It was sitting under her desk hidden by her draped yoga-pants – his husband’s fingers, wrapped neatly and set in a bag of ice, while he and Moira walked around barking orders like nothing was wrong. It was a black comedy indeed. 

Now they were in Erik’s car, driving to the only place Albertine had spent his debit card in the last three weeks (a stereo shop; Erik didn’t think this lead would go anywhere except to the holder of a stolen debit card). They needed leads, but they were completely sure of their suspect now. Toad had identified Albertine’s picture in moments. He had the sort of handsome face people remembered.

“Something feels wrong,” Moira mused, possibly to herself, as she read through Albertine’s credit and medical history. 

“Did things feel right before?” Erik growled.

Moira wrinkled her nose, not looking up from the papers. “Albertine’s behaviour record in prison is spotless and Emma Frost didn’t have a bad word against him. What made him snap?”

“He’s got a psych record,” Erik shrugged, focusing on driving just a little bit over the speed limit and changing lanes too often.

“Institutionalised twice for anorexia and once for depression,” Moira countered. “Mental health problems don’t turn you into a killer, we both know that. He’s a smart guy but everything I’ve read suggests he’s unlucky, not sociopathic. But then – Florez’s murder.”

Erik made an aborted noise with his throat. She looked at him, “Something you just remembered?”

“Nothing relevant.”

“I’m still listening.”

Erik breathed on through his nose. Nothing relevant. It wasn’t – they knew it was Albertine. But-

“He didn’t take part in Florez’s murder,” Erik spoke up at last. He cleared his throat, taking one hand off the wheel to wave at the pile of papers in Moira’s lap. “God, you know I hated those bastards, Moira, but this guy – my instinct then was that he was in over his depth.”

“And your instinct now?” Moira asked.

Erik stuck his bottom jaw out, thinking how much he had to explain. He decided to go back to the beginning. “After Florez was dumped in the river, my team caught the suspects pretty quickly, but the activists closed up and refused to testify against their own. We had no wedge, no way through their wall of silence, and we couldn’t charge all of them. The breakthrough was this tape that turned up in the home of the nastiest of the prick mutant-haters. On it you could clearly see the faces of five of the activists, and that was it, they all went behind bars.”

He paused, unwilling to make excuses for the man who was probably torturing his husband right now in some suburban attic. 

“Cassidy said Albertine filmed it,” Moira supplied.

“He filmed the murder, sure, but we were pretty sure he also planted the tape for us to find,” Erik said in a rush. “He was too scared to leave when Florez was dying and too scared to admit he basically gave us the evidence.”

Moira frowned. “How sure are you? That he would do that?”

“Not so sure now, but I was sure at the time,” Erik shrugged. “My whole team was. But we didn’t tell the judge any of our suspicions. He still let her die, and we didn’t want him to get away with that. He only served eighteen months. Not enough.”

He gave Moira a hard look, and she nodded. Erik could tell she wanted to say something, but he didn’t have a clue what. Before she could speak, however, his phone began to buzz.

“Hang on, Cassidy might have news,” he pulled over to the side of the road and got out his phone. 

It was a blocked number. He glanced at Moira and she caught his trepidation and sat up a little straighter. He raised the phone to his ear.

“Lehnsherr.”

“Good afternoon, Mr Lehnsherr. Got my package into the fridge, I hope?” 

Erik grabbed the handle of the door above his head and twisted, wrenching, trying not to warp the whole cabin with the waves of power he could feel building inside him and beginning to spill over. There was a metallic creak and the cabin gave a tiny shudder on its suspension. Moira’s eyes widened.

_Control yourself. Control the situation. Get him back on your side._ It was Charles’ voice in his head, though he had no illusions that it was Charles projecting. He was alone in this. No, not alone. Moira was already pulling out her cell to text the station and get a trace. He switched his phone to the other ear and grabbed her wrist, shaking his head. The killer would know.

“It wasn’t my fault,” Erik gritted his teeth. “I did what you said. I put them off Frost. My team found that building all by themselves.”

“Don’t!” the killer’s voice crackled as it tripled in volume, and then there was the sound of heavy breathing as he, too, got his temper back under control. In another world Erik might actually have felt some empathy for him. “Don’t lie to me, Mr Lehnsherr. I know what your little apish friend McCoy told you. Do you think you deserve to keep your sad little telepath alive?”

“He is alive,” Erik said, his tone far more sure than the blood pounding in his ears. He changed tact, “You made your point. I know you’re serious now. I’ll do anything you say, I swear.”

“Didn’t I tell you not to tell anyone else?”

Erik’s head jerked up and his gaze turned accusingly to Moira. She must have read his thoughts, because she shook her head and mouthed, “I haven’t.” He’d made her swear not to communicate anything to anyone else, especially not electronically. He didn’t know who to believe – the killer who knew everything, or his partner? 

But the killer was laughing. “You’ve just given it away, Mr Lehnsherr. Who did you tell? Not McCoy – it was pretty Moira, wasn’t it?”

“It was an accident!” Erik snarled, hyperventilating, barely aware that his hand was still on Moira’s wrist, grinding her bones together until she gasped in pain. “I didn’t mean for her to find out!”

“No – no, I’ll give you that one,” he could _hear_ the bastard smiling, “I’m rather glad. Now Moira can join the game. One reiterated instruction, Detective, and then I hope you do as you’re told or you don’t want to know what I shall mail you next. Keep Emma Frost off the radar. Now give the phone to Moira.”

“She’s not here,” Erik said, reluctant to relinquish control to another.

“Yes she is.”

Erik inhaled very slowly, let go of Moira’s wrist – the blood rushed into her skin in the shape of his fingers – and held out the phone.

“He wants to talk to you.”

Moira took cell with a steady hand. “Mr Albertine?” she said. Erik’s eyes widened, his instinct to snatch the phone back. Moira spoke quickly, with a softness that she rarely used except when interviewing traumatised victims. “This is Moira MacTaggert, Mr Albertine. Can I help you?” without waiting longer than a beat for an answer she continued, “Because I want to. You must be feeling trapped and angry, but we can help. This doesn’t have to end badly for you. If you give me a chance, I can get you a deal with the prosecution-”

Erik heard only the faintest murmur of the voice as he cut Moira off. She listened for what seemed like a millennium, as Erik’s hands fisted handfuls of his trouser fabric. Finally she drew the phone away from her ear.

“You hung up!” Erik choked.

“He told me to,” Moira said quietly. 

“Well? What did he say?” 

Moira’s gaze flicked up to meet his. “He said he wants me to join the game. He said,” her jaw jutted out and she breathed in through her nose, “that he’s going to make me kill you. And if I do it now, he’ll let Charles go.”

Erik’s clenched fists began to shake. She put one hand over his. “I know what you’re thinking,” she said, in a sharper, more commanding voice than when she’d spoken to the killer, “so don’t. I’m not going to kill you. Not for the tiny chance he was telling the truth.”

Erik nodded. The tiny chance felt worth it, in this moment, even worth dying for. But the alternative had a small chance as well – a chance he intended to increase until it was the only certainty. He would find his husband alive. And he would kill Lyle Albertine with his bare hands.


	5. a little transparency

Charles lay in darkness and bit down on his lip to keep from sobbing. He would not cry. He would not give the fucker that satisfaction. He was strong enough to get through this. _You are strong enough you are strong you are-_

He wanted Erik. He wanted Raven. He wanted anyone. 

He didn’t know where he was. They’d driven for a long time, until Charles lost track of the turns he’d been trying to memorise. There had been about half an hour on a freeway, rushing along quiet with the hush of few other cars passing them, against what he guessed was a wind coming from the left – what was that? Easterly?

As the gunman had dragged him from the boot, he’d glimpsed an isolated lifestyle block, the orchard overgrown and the road behind them in desperate need of maintenance. Once again he was struck by how little the gunman cared that he was seeing so much. It had to mean that the man planned to kill him, no matter what Erik did.

“They are going to catch you,” Charles growled as the gunman shoved him into a windowless room on the ground floor. The sparse furniture was shrouded in dust sheets and there was a strange deadness about the walls that Charles realised he was sensing with his telepathy, even despite the pills. “Don’t you understand? _They are going to catch you_. I’ve spent my whole career studying others just like you. I know what you’re thinking, I know you don’t care, all you care about is getting the rush – but it’s not enough is it? It’s never as good as you want it to be. So you keep killing, thinking next time will be perfect – but it won’t be, it never will be-”

The gunman kicked the back of his legs and his knees hit the floor. The bad knee throbbed and he bit down on the noise in his throat. The gunman was still clutching the metal chain of the cuffs behind Charles’ back and he dragged them up excruciatingly until Charles was bent right over. The man pulled over the cloth-covered table with his foot and placed Charles’ cuffed hands on it. 

“What are you doing?” Charles demanded. He struggled, and the gunman flashed a sleek hunting knife in front of his face. 

“Stay very still, or this goes into your eye,” he warned. 

Charles stayed still. The man had pressed one of his hands flat against the table, palm upwards, twisting the wrist cruelly. 

“What are you doing?” Charles repeated. “What are you-”

And then he just screamed. 

\---

That had been hours ago. The gunman had tied his feet before he’d left, and Charles had heard the door lock. He’d drifted in and out of consciousness, at one point trying to wrap his bleeding hand in a wad of shirt, but he couldn’t tie it off. He’d let it bleed. After the initial flash of shock and dizziness he couldn’t sleep. The pain was too much, stabbing at the back of his eyes whenever he closed them. There was an armchair nearby, but he couldn’t find the energy to reach it, couldn’t think of any way to crawl to it and clamber on with his limbs bound. 

_You are strong enough to get through this_. 

It felt like a lie. What the hell did it matter? Either he was going to die here or he wasn’t. Being strong enough or tough enough didn’t matter one fucking jot. He was totally, completely helpless either way and nothing or did or said would save him-

 _Oh, stop whining,_ whispered a voice in his mind. _You really think he won’t let down his guard? You have to be ready_. 

Charles raised his head from the varnished floorboards. 

“Hello?” he called, and then repeated it in his head. _Is there a telepath here?_

 _What else could I be?_ the voice sneered. Charles could feel a glimpse of the mind beyond – a woman, another mutant, tired but staunch. A prisoner like him. 

_How far away are you?_ He asked.

 _Right next door. The master bedroom. Trussed up considerably more tightly than you, I think. You had better get your act together and escape, sweetie, because you’re the best chance both of us have got right now._ There was a pause, and he felt her probing deeper. _You’re powerful-_

 _Stop reading my mind,_ he threw up barriers against her, simple tricks that anyone could do, the sort of thing he’d taught Erik long ago when Erik had still been skittish about having a boyfriend who could hear his thoughts. 

_Alright, alright. It’s foggy in there anyway. Serine inhibitors, right? You feel like you’re omega level most of the time. You could really do a number on Lyle if you had your powers._

_You don’t need to tell me that,_ he sighed. _Lyle? You know his name? Why haven’t you called for help yet? Someone has to be in range of your telepathy._

_This house dampens our powers. But I reckon you could bust through that if you were working at your normal strength. You gotta get off those drugs if you’re going to help us._

_He built a house to repress telepathy?_ Charles asked.

_He didn’t build it. My mother did. She was a telepath herself and I inherited this craphole from her years ago._

_How long have you been here?_

_Fucking weeks, sweetie. What the hell are_ you _doing here?_

Charles couldn’t really read her clearly, but the connection she’d stretched between them gave him a flash of her situation. She didn’t know the gunman had been killing mutants. She thought she was the only one he’d abducted. He hadn’t hurt her as far as Charles could tell, just kept her prisoner. Why? Why spare her when he’d murdered so many others? He didn’t want to answer her question yet. 

_I’m Charles Xavier. And you…?_

_Emma Frost. Pleased to make your acquaintance. And may our friendship be a long one._

_You knew this man before he abducted you, didn’t you? How? Who is he?_

_That’s a good question,_ Emma replied. _I know who he used to be. But now… I don’t think he’s the same person. In any capacity._

\---

A deep tremor ran through the floorboards and tuned into a distant buzz.

 _That's the generator,_ Emma explained. _The house isn't connected to the main grid. He must be back._

A few seconds later, the bulb above Charles’ head buzzed and began to glow. 

"How do you know he ever left?" Charles whispered. Thinking everything in clear sentences, without his powers of projection, was starting to give him a headache. No wonder Erik always spoke aloud when they were having a psychic conversation, even though it made him look like he was talking to an imaginary friend.

_There's no landline or cell reception out here - he has to leave to make phone calls. And he needed to send off that little souvenir he got from you, didn't he?_

Charles closed his eyes. Just thinking about his fingers made the hurt flare up all over again.

“Tell me more,” he said, under his breath. “Tell me what he is. Why can’t I read his mind? Why is he doing all this?”

He felt Emma’s mind pull back, protecting herself from what little telepathy he had at his mastery. She didn’t want to tell him – there was guilt there, a marbled kind of guilt that he knew came from it being only half-rational. And the walled self-defence of a woman who had never made excuses for anyone, or let anyone make excuses for her.

“Emma,” he said firmly, pushing himself up onto one elbow and scooting over to sit upright with one shoulder propped against the wall. It wasn’t comfortable, but nothing had been comfortable since the cab of the killer’s Lexus, what seemed like eons ago. “There’s something you should know. This guy didn’t just abduct us. He’s taken others. Two humans and three mutants that I know of, and probably more. He murdered them, cruelly and slowly. He’ll keep doing it unless someone stops him, and maybe that person has got to be you or me-”

 _Fuck,_ was Emma’s response, clear and with a gash of panic running through it. _I didn’t know. I didn’t think he would synthesise so fast._

Charles frowned to himself. ‘Synthesis’ was a phrase from telepathy books he’d studied in his youth, trying to understand the limits and dangers of his own powers. But it shouldn’t refer to non-telepaths.

“Is Lyle one of us?” he asked. She knew what he meant.

 _No,_ she replied, and he felt her mind unfurl from its wary ball. _But he is a mutant._

“I figured that much,” he said. “Will you tell me what we’re up against? Please? I’m a criminal psychologist, maybe if I can understand him better, talk him down-”

 _Oh, don’t get above yourself,_ she snapped. _I’m his parole officer. Don’t you think I’ve tried that already?_ He heard her shuffle her memories, trying to decide how best to present them.

She started after a long stretch of mental silence, _I should start with me. I am – I was – a rehabilitative telepath for most of my career. You know what that is?_

“A little,” he said. He’d been approached a couple of times at university by government types, offering him a big pay scale straight out of graduation and a salary while he trained for a very particular position. “You turn criminals into good guys.”

_I did what I could. I can’t plant thoughts in people’s heads like I reckon you can, but I can fiddle with them a little. Reduce aggression, increase dependence on jobs, family obligations, routines – all the little things that keep most people from picking up a kitchen knife and stabbing their neighbour every time something pisses them off. I’ve always been paid well, but that kind of work… it gets to you after a while. All the things I’ve seen inside their heads, all the times I’ve put myself behind their eyes as killers and rapists and sadists. It’s rubbed off on me. Or maybe rusted whatever ‘goodness’ I might have had. A patina of discord in my mind. I started to get out of the business a couple of years ago, and they kept me on in the same capacity as a regular, human parole officer._

He could sense her shifting, a burst of frustration and anger at her situation like an animal reminded of the trap it’s fallen into. Finally she continued. _Lyle Albertine was my last case. He’d just come out of eighteen months as an accessory to murder – of a mutant girl. He was a pro-human activist, he’d spent most of his adult life hating mutants. But he was… he was a sweet guy, really. When he found out I was a telepath he got over it pretty quickly. Even asked me to go inside his head, try and ‘fix him’, but when I tried I found there wasn’t much to fix. He biggest flaw was a bit of bigotry and self-obsession. So yeah, he was an easy case, and I think I even liked him a bit. It was him who convinced me to quit the job altogether._

_I wish I’d seen what was going on earlier. I’m a damn telepath, I should have known. But all I knew was that over the last month or so of his parole, he’d got harder and harder to read. Like his mind was… sort of…_

“Transparent,” Charles said. “Layers and layers of crystal sheets with lights inside that I couldn’t focus on.”

_If you gotta be poetic, sweetie._

“That was his power? Resisting telepathy?”

_Oh no. It was far more exquisite than that. It had started in prison, he told me eventually, but had been magnified once he got out. He could hear – electrical signals. Decode binary flashes of electricity straight from the emails and phone calls and text messages and pics and tweets and facebook updates whizzing around us. He could see all of it, if he was in range of a working phoneline. Sometimes he could pluck them right out of the air, if he was standing in the right place and the wind was coming from the right direction. And it was growing exponentially. As he experimented, he soon discovered he couldn’t just hear cyberspace – he could join it. He could… well, it was a type of teleportation I suppose, or… no, more like astral projection. He could digitalise himself and project his body anywhere else in the city. Eventually I imagine he could have beamed himself, hitchhiking on satellites, anywhere else in the world. Maybe even to other planets. But he…_

“Hated himself,” Charles whispered, hunching in his shoulders. He’d felt that piece of the puzzle sliding into place throughout Emma’s description.

_Irreparable self-hatred. He believed mutants had taken everything from him, and now he was becoming one himself. I kept an eye on him even after he’d finished parole and I knew he wasn’t doing well. He refused to go to mutant support groups or do night classes on controlling his powers, so I suggested he come up here to my mother’s old house. I hate this place, I hate the telepathy-repressors she built into it. But she came here to get away from the world, to escape all the foreign voices in her head, and I thought it would be good for Lyle to do the same. Out of cell phone range, he could pull the landline out of the wall. Get some headspace to himself._

_About a week later I got a call from him. I knew the second I heard his voice that things were bad, really bad. I told him not to make a damn move until I got there, jumped in my car and drove to the house. I think I even left my wallet sitting on the kitchen counter. When I got here he was raving, crying, saying it was all my fault, that I’d ‘infected’ him with my mutant-ness, that he was worthless, that everyone would hate him, that everyone did hate him… I wasn’t patient with him, I admit it. I’m not a counsellor, and I couldn’t even read his mind. I told him he had to come with me to the hospital._

“But he didn’t want that,” Charles guessed.

 _He didn’t want another prison. And damn it, I couldn’t read his mind,_ Emma’s thoughts were riddled with swollen pustules of guilt now, her mental voice shaking. _I didn’t know what he was going to do. But he…_ he could feel her take a deep, strengthening breath. _Before I could stop him, he pulled out a handgun and shot himself in the mouth._

\---

“Emma Frost is the key,” Erik said. Sitting across his desk from him, Moira nodded.

“She’s not like the others. She doesn’t fit the victim pattern, and he knew her before she disappeared,” Moira closed the file of Angel Salvadore and placed it reverently on top of the pile. Thank goodness Cassidy had a habit of printing every little thing out and highlighting it like he’d forgotten that’s what emails were for. For once, he might be saving lives instead of just trashing the environment.

“And he specifically wants the investigation to avoid her,” Erik added, lowering his voice and leaning forward on one elbow.

Moira pursed her lips. She shuffled her chair forward, resting her entwined hands on his desk. “That really pings my radar,” she said. “He knows there’s only so much you can do to hinder the investigation and that we won’t stop digging on our own, so why drop such a big, fat hint in our laps?”

“He’s playing with us,” Erik agreed. “He’s trying to put us in a position that’s to his advantage.”

“Which means even if we have a strong lead on Frost, we can’t go barrelling in like our asses were on fire.”

Erik dropped his eyes for just a moment, his face steeling itself quickly.

“Erik…” Moira warned. “You agree, right? We can’t bust in again? He saw us coming last time.”

“I was careless last time,” Erik said. “This time I’ll go alone.”

“No!” Moira hissed. “He has predicted everything so far, he’ll be waiting for you!”

Erik slammed his fist down on the desk. A pair of forensic examiners a few feet away jumped and one swore over a spilled reagent. Erik was breathing heavy through his nose. Moira held his gaze.

“We have to outsmart him,” she said quietly. “Alright?”

After a long staring competition, Erik nodded.

“Right,” still looking at his face, Moira reached for the folder on her lap. “Then I think I have our next lead.”

As she slid it across the desk to him, they both turned at the bark of Erik’s name, very much like a pair of sheepdogs to the farmer’s whistle. Which was fair enough, because the bark had been McCone’s, and their boss expected the undiverted attention of every cop in every room he ever walked into. 

“Sir,” Erik said neutrally. Moira noticed he had pulled the folder closer and flipped it open without taken his eyes off McCone’s rapidly approaching spectacles.

“Is this true? Your main suspect is one of the Florez perps?” McCone finally came to a halt right beside Moira’s shoulder, folding his arms. 

“That’s one hypothesis,” Erik said. Moira wondered if McCone could see the shadows under his eyes, the two day’s stubble or the starved twitch of the vein in his temple. 

She cleared her throat to get their boss’ attention off her partner, even if it meant she had to crane her neck back to look up at the looming McCone. “We’re exploring a lot of possibilities right now, sir. We’ve got some strong trails,” she added brightly, hoping a smile would convince McCone to go bully some rookies or really absolutely anything that didn’t involve talking to Erik for more than a few moments. Anything except looking at the bag of ice under her desk, that was. 

“Tell me straight out,” McCone grizzled. “Is this Albertine your top guy, or is he not?”

Moira licked her lips. “He is.”

McCone turned to Erik again, and Moira wondered (for the first time in her entire career, she thought) whether undoing the top two buttons of her shirt would help this situation at all. Or even three? 

“You don’t look like you’re taking this well,” McCone told Erik firmly, rubbing his chin. “Is there something that connects this to the Florez case? Is this too personal to you?”

Erik gave a derisive snort. 

“Erik’s been working like a machine, he’s-” Moira started, but McCone cut her off.

“I’m not paying you as Lehnsherr’s PA, stop answering his questions.”

Erik said in a papery voice, “Nothing to connect them beyond Albertine himself. And I’m just tired.”

“Right. Get some damn sleep then, and a shave,” McCone jabbed a finger at the detective and then turned to go. Moira let out a long breath.

“Actually,” rasped Erik.

Moira and McCone both froze. McCone looked back with a frown. “Yes?”

“Actually,” Erik repeated. Moira noticed with a sinking heart that the folder in front of him was closed. He’d seen what was inside. “I think it’s getting to me a bit. Bringing back memories of the Florez case, I mean. Do you mind if I take the rest of the day off? Get to bed early?”

McCone tapped his foot and finally assented.

“Good,” Erik smiled. Moira could tell how hollow it was, but could their boss? Probably not. 

“Erik,” Moira got up at the same time as her partner. “We need you here.”

Erik glanced at her. “I took the bus this morning. You can drive me home, MacTaggert. Or I’ll find my own way.”

McCone was watching them both with a crease growing on his brow. Moira pressed her lips together. Her gaze clutched tight to Erik’s. It was a long time since she’d looked into someone else’s eyes for this long, and for the first time she felt a glimpse of what it was to be a telepath. She could feel the single-minded rage and despair concentrated behind Erik’s face, like a typhoon compressed into a diamond sphere. 

She couldn’t let him go alone. Albertine wanted that. The bastard was waiting for them.

“I’ll drive you,” she said, reaching for her coat. 

Erik picked up the file in front of him. It contained a real estate ad for the address of a property out in some backwater farming locale, currently listed for sale. The agent Cassidy had called said it was the only property they had on record that was owned by one Emma Frost. ‘Modified villa with rustic facilities and undisturbed atmosphere of isolation and tranquillity’.

McCone watched them go without further comment. 

\---

There were footsteps outside the door. Charles flinched into himself, banging his bad knee. He could hear the creaking of the old house above him, but the footsteps soon moved on.

“How?” Charles whispered, gazing upwards. “How can he be the same man?”

 _He isn’t the same man,_ Emma replied. _The body wants to survive even when the mind does not. I told you he could project himself through the wires – in the moment he died, he tried to… to upload a copy, I suppose, but the house had no conduit. The landline was detached, the power was coming from the generator._

“So he used you,” Charles sat up a little straighter. “He tried to upload himself into you.”

 _Yes,_ he felt Emma’s relief that he understood so quickly. _But not even the mutant brain can stand in for a computer. The transfer was corrupted. His simulacrum filled in the gaps from my mind. But I’m a telepath, so of course my own memories and habits were protected. All he could take were the scraps. The residues of all the criminals I’ve tried to change over the years. He’s become an amalgamation of all the worst minds I’ve delved into._

Charles shuddered. To lose part of your own mind was horrible enough, but to have it infected by cruelty and malice… to change what you were into something as hideous as Erik's serial killer…

“But he’s real, he’s physical,” Charles croaked. “He’s got a body!”

_A malleable body. Not a shapeshifter, but clothes become what he wants, short distances can be crossed instantaneously – and the projection can’t be harmed by blows or weapons. That’s how it worked before he died. It’s how it works now he’s parasitising my mind._

“That’s why he’s kept you alive,” Charles realised. “He can’t kill you because he’s still – still projecting from inside your head. If he hurts you-”

“And if he hears you,” said a low voice from the doorway.

Charles’ head whipped up and he shoved himself backwards so fast he crushed his bound arms against the wall behind him. He gritted his teeth, feeling a fresh runnel of blood smear against the inside of his palm as he closed the good hand over the wounded one to protect it. The gunman – Albertaine - was standing inside the room. The door hung open behind him. Charles had been so occupied with the conversation he hadn't even heard the lock click.

He wriggled backwards as Albertine strode forward. In his head Emma was hissing, in what she evidently thought was a firm and reassuring tone, _He doesn’t hear my thoughts, Charles, he can only hear what you've said aloud._

"How much did she tell you?" the gunman loomed over him, the hunting knife hanging casually from one curled hand. With the other he bent and grabbed Charles around the throat, pushing him back into the corner of the room.

 _Don't tell him! He doesn't know he's dead, he doesn't understand!_ Emma thrummed frantically.

"She said," Charles croaked around the slowly clenching hand, "that you were better than this. That she didn't understand why you were doing this."

Albertine’s grip relaxed. Charles coughed until he could breathe again, and glared at the man as he said, "Isn't it time for my medicine?"

"So it is," Albertine gave a twisted smile. Charles tried to tell himself the man in front of him wasn't real, that the fingers around his neck were an astral projection, but he couldn't believe it. The stranger's sweat was clammy on his throat. He could smell pungent breath and feel the itch of Albertine’s business jacket as it brushed against the span of skin between his open collar.

“I can take it myself,” Charles said. He tried to think whether he should try to sound resistant or pliant, and found he didn’t have the energy to put on an act at all. Even his hunger had crawled down into the bottom of his abdomen where it lay whorled and moaning softly. He’d do anything for one of those shitty airplane meals right now. Or even just one of the complimentary biscuits.

The gunman looked at him for a long time, perhaps ten or twenty seconds in which Charles couldn’t remember whether anyone in the world still existed apart him and this already-dead man. Perhaps he’d imagined even Emma. Then he stepped back and motioned for Charles to turn around.

It would have been hard enough to do so merely with his legs and hands tied. It was a thousand times harder to overcome the wave of terror when he started to turn his back on the man. He found himself unable to unclench his good hand, as if his own body didn’t believe the bastard could have a speck of benevolence. His injured hand hurt too much to clench, and would have to do as a sacrifice if the gunman wanted more fingers.

But instead the killer unlocked the cuffs and let him settle himself back against the wall before he handed over a bottle of water and a single white pill. Charles took it and washed it down with half the bottle, then opened his mouth to prove it was gone.

“Can I keep my hands in front of me?” he asked. “So I can drink the rest of the water later.”

Once again he had to wait through a long stare, as if the gunman thought losing his telepathy would make Charles’ brain easy to read. Once again, he didn’t have the energy to act innocent. He sat and waited, listening to the faint efforts of his heart, pumping blood that was thickened by dehydration and laced with toxic stress hormones. Finally the cuffs were locked again with his arms in front. He clutched the water bottle between his bloodied palms as if it were the Star of Africa.

The second the door shut behind the gunman, Charles crawled out of the corner and stuck his fingers down his throat. Erik always said he didn’t have a gag reflex, but Charles thought Erik either overestimated his endowment or just didn’t appreciate how much self-control Charles had.

His throat contracted, but nothing came up. _Please,_ Charles begged, _Please, please. Even if I can’t blow my husband again for the rest of my life without wanting to be sick, just let me have this one thing._

His stomach heaved again, but he still tasted nothing but the bile at the top of his oesophagus. Charles leaned his head against the sheet-covered armchair, closing his eyes and jabbing the back of his throat again. Nothing.

Emma’s voice crept in from his periphery. _Need some help, sweetie?_

 _It’d be much appreciated,_ he thought.

The next moment he was overwhelmed a stab of telepathic nausea so intense he barely had time to pull his hands out and catch himself as his entire torso clenched like a wrung-out sponge. There was nothing in his stomach but acid and the half-bottle of water he’d just drunk, but he wished he’d drunk a little less as the last of it dribbled out of his nose. He pressed his head against the armchair, gasping for breath and spitting sour bile onto the floor.

In the centre of the puddle was the little white pill, still shining in its sugar capsule.

 _Alright,_ he strained to formulate a cohesive thought, rallying his own spirits as well as Emma’s. _It’s going to be at least four or five hours before I see any real improvement, and eight hours before I can project even forty feet. Probably less with the dampeners in the walls. But it’s a start._

_So basically no better than I can do right now, cupcake?_

"Give me time," he breathed. He tried not to think about the next pill yet, or how long it would be before he could force another mind to obey him – three days, four maybe. He doubted Lyle’s mind, that impossible digital replica of a human mind, would obey his telepathy the way organic brains did. 

His arms gave way and he crumpled down onto his side, just missing the caustic puddle. He lay staring at the thin gap under the door for a long time.

 _And that little pile of watery puke?_ Emma asked. _Don’t you think that might give the game away?_

Fuck.

She was right. He had to hide it. The pill first – Charles forced himself back up onto his bare knees, feeling the swollen one grind loosely against the floorboards. He pinched the pill between thumb and forefinger (he’d avoided looking at his mutilated hand until now, and winced at the sight) and shuffled across to lift up the sheet over the armchair and shove the pill under the seat cushion. Should he have crushed it first to make it less noticeable? Never mind. If the gunman was looking for a pill, he’d spot a disseminated powder just as easily.

But what about the sick? Should he use a dust sheet, try and absorb it, hope the gunman didn’t notice some of the furniture was uncovered?

 _He’ll notice,_ Emma warned. _He’s not stupid._

“What about pulling the couch over it?” Charles whispered. “It’s low to the floor, it might cover the smell to-”

_He’ll notice it’s been moved._

“Then what do I do?” he groaned.

He already knew. _Do it,_ the same voice that had rallied him before was now shoving him. It didn’t sound like Erik. It sounded like Charles himself, some shadowy, fierce Charles that would kill before he could be killed. _Don’t think, just do it._

He swallowed, then bent down and began to lick the puke back off the floor.

He almost threw it back up at one point. When it was done, he crawled back into the corner, twisted the top off the water bottle and drank every drop. He couldn’t get the taste of varnish and dust and acid off his tongue. He could still smell it on his clothes, in his nose. Could the gunman smell it? Would he guess? Should Charles try to cover it up? 

“This is how they’re going to find me,” Charles laughed, leaning his head back against the wall. “Sitting in my underwear, stinking of vomit. Perhaps I’d better piss myself to complete the picture. The autopsy’s going to say I died of self-disgust.”

Emma didn’t answer. He was glad. He’d really rather pretend he was quite alone right now, take the time to gather his scattered composure.

“I have a PhD,” he said to himself. “Seventy-two hours ago I was giving a PowerPoint presentation on the limitations of longitudinal trio studies. I was worried the sweat marks under my arms were showing.”

The inside of his nose burned. His stomach hurt. His knee hurt. His hand hurt worst. He closed his eyes to let a couple of tears trickle down his cheeks. And then, having commiserated with his wretchedness long enough, he breathed in and tried to get some sleep.

\---

They drove through the afternoon. Moira was at the wheel and Erik sat rod-straight with the file and a road map in front of him, running his fingers over the thin black line that marked out the place where Frost’s house sat on the edge of nowhere. Somewhere between those little illustrated contours was a house, and Charles might be in the house. 

Moira tried to talk to him, but only twice.

“What’s your plan?”

“I’ll know when I get there.”

And then about an hour later: “Erik, I need to know what you’re thinking.”

That time he didn’t answer. She didn’t try again. She’d have his back if it came to a fight, that’s all that he cared about right now. 

The clouds had come over to leave only a late, pearly-grey light by the time they reached the turn-off. The road was packed dirt with a thin coat of gravel. Dust rose behind them like a smoke signal. The line on the map stretched ten or twelve miles, but the real estate ad said the house was less than half an hour from the highway, and they’d covered most of that already.

When he finally spoke again, he threw one arm in front of Moira in the same moment. “Stop, stop, stop!”

She eased the brakes on and they halted in the middle of the road. A startled rabbit bounded away, its white tail the only movement among the pines.

“What is it?”

“I can feel metal,” Erik growled. “Another car – stationary, in front of a building. About six hundred feet up the road.”

“You can tell that?” Moira’s eyes widened. 

“Only because there’s no other metal for miles,” he shrugged. He didn’t like been so far from civilization for that exact reason.

Moira pulled out her phone, then evidently remembered they’d both turned them off when they left the city. If the killer could steal emails, maybe he could hack GPS and would know they were approaching. 

“We can’t go in there alone,” Moira hissed. “We need to outsmart him, remember? You made me bring a whole SWAT team last time. You know how dangerous this guy is.”

She was right. Erik stared along the road, his mind locked up with indecision. “We can approach through the trees and at least take a look,” Erik insisted. “There’s always a chance we’re on the wrong track.”

Moira gave him a glance that said he wasn’t fooling anyone. She backed up until there was a patch of calf-high grass where she could pull right over. They couldn’t hide the car, but Erik wasn’t thinking a single thought about leaving. All that mattered was getting confirmation that this was the house. That this was where it would all come to a head.

Moira had brought binoculars and her handgun, the latter of which she holstered under her arm. Erik sneered at it and took the lead through the forest. He hoped the killer had a gun. He’d always wondered if he could squeeze bullets until they exploded inside the magazine in an opponent’s hand. 

The trees were sparse, the walk smooth over a thick carpet of pine needles. He honed in on the scent of metal and barrelled towards it with no thought for subterfuge. Moira finally took a hold of his elbow and slowed him down.

“Element of surprise,” she said. “Okay?”

He nodded stiffly. The light was stronger ahead, where the tree line ended, and they crept up to a thick hedge of blackberry brambles around the edge of the property. They could see a two-storey house at the top of a shallow rise, in need of a paint job but otherwise looking sturdy and well maintained. And parked around the side of it was-

“The Lexus,” Erik hissed. He clicked his fingers for the binoculars, but Moira already had them to her face. 

“That’s Frost’s number plate,” she confirmed. “Christ, he’s here. He’s got to be.”

“Charles,” Erik leaned into the brambles, heedless of the prickles through his jacket. “Charles, can you sense us?”

There was no burst of joy in his head, no familiar voice echoing inside his skull. Sweat broke out under Erik’s collar as for the first time the reality that Charles could already be dead struck him a blow behind his eyes. He felt like he was dying himself, like there was a plastic bag contracting around his heart.

Moira touched his arm. “Is he talking?”

Erik shook his head. Moira glanced between him and the house. “We need backup,” she said quietly. “We need to go back to the station.”

“Wait,” Erik begged. He strained to make out the interior beyond the windows, in the hopes that somehow Charles would be right there looking out at him. Or a sign – Charles would leave something recognisable on the sill, or write on the window, or hang a flag – where would he even get a flag? Charles was clever, Charles would find something. 

There had to be something.

“Erik, we’ve got to get backup.”

“How?” Erik spat, still not taking his eyes of the house. “Every call we make, he intercepts. Do we drive all the way back, admit what we know and put together the team by word of mouth? It’ll be hours and hours, Moira, and every minute we lose-”

Moira had listened quietly, but her grip on his elbow was tightening. “Look at me. You and I? We work because I follow your lead and you do as I say. Alright, Erik? You do as I say. We break our habits now, we get sloppy, and our chances of beating this fucker plummet like a brick over a cliff.”

Erik’s hand closed around a blackberry creeper. The thorns bit through his woollen glove and he clenched his fist tighter, anchoring himself in its bite. She was right. Recklessness would do them no favours. 

And then – something was nagging at him, something made him frown – a feeling, a tickle like he’d forgotten to pay one of the utility bills at home. He honed in on it, and felt the alien touch of another’s mind in his head.

_\--I HEAR YOU! -- - - HERE, ERIK, I’M-- HERE-- - --!_

\---

“Charles!” Erik’s voice was only a rasp. He felt his mouth gape. The voice was faint and frail as a spider thread drifting in the wind, but he wasn’t imagining it. Moira’s head twitched around.

 _He’s -- in the house – don’t know exactly ---– where-- - –_ Charles was clearly struggling fiercely against the serine inhibitors, and Erik growled at the weakness of the connection, how little information it gave him. After more than a decade of companionship, the brush of Charles’ projection should have told him in an instant his husband’s mood and pains. Instead the telepathy was as sterile as a typed letter from the bank, one that had been translated by an online dictionary into Cambodian and then back to English. 

“You hear him?” Moira asked.

“Sh,” Erik was concentrating on Charles’ strained voice. He echoed the message aloud for her benefit. “He’s in a windowless room in the middle of the house. Ground floor. The killer’s somewhere upstairs. He’s bound but I’m not-” he gritted his teeth. “I don’t know if it’s metal cuffs or not. He can’t hear my thoughts much, he just knows I’m listening.”

 _Erik Erik Erik- --_ Charles’ voice thrummed with warning, telling him to get help, not to enter the house on his own. _\-- -He’s a mutant Erik---- He’s –-- can’t be physically hurt- -- don’t do anything crazy ---pleasepleaseloveyou—don’t face him alone--_

Moira was breathing heavily. “Erik, we can’t storm in there.”

“I’d like to see you stop me,” Erik turned to her at last.

He suddenly felt like he hadn’t seen a single human face since that terrible night when he’d first got the call from the killer, and here at last he was seeing Moira for the first time.

And it must have been reciprocal, because the next second she reached for her gun and cocked it. “Alright. But we have to move fast.”


	6. the board is set

When he was fourteen, Erik killed his mother.

Not directly. He wasn’t the one who fractured her skull behind the strip mall in the eastern suburbs. He wasn’t the one who fled when the cashier of the Tots’n’Kids outlet store, coming around for his smoke break, grabbed a plank of wood and yelled that he was calling the police. But there was only one reason she could have been in the eastern suburbs, and that was to visit the mutant support centre where her son had been attending weekly classes to control his ability. So it was Erik’s fault she was there. Erik’s fault she was taking the short cut behind the mall to get to her car. Erik’s fault someone grabbed her and smashed her head into the steel corner of a garbage skip. Erik’s fault that she lay mumbling unintelligible prayers while the cashier sat holding her hand until the ambulance arrived.

When Erik got home from school the day of the attack, there were two police officers in the house talking to his father. Edie’s bag had been taken, but found dumped only a block away. The officers did not want to assume it was a random robbery gone wrong; perhaps the perps had seen her leave the support centre, perhaps this was one of the hate crimes the city was trying so hard to stamp out. They couldn't ask Edie herself because she had not regained consciousness at the hospital. 

The younger of the two officers was a constable named Jube. That day, after explaining what had happened to his mother, she talked to Erik for a long time while her partner was interviewing his father.

“They hurt her because of what I am,” Erik said numbly.

“No, kiddo,” Constable Jube squeezed his hand. “You're wonderful. She loves you.”

“People hate us,” Erik snarled at her. “You don’t know anything about what she loves! You don’t _know!_ ”

“I’m a mutant cop,” Jube said firmly, and Erik’s jaw snapped shut. “Of course I know. I had pricks in my class who refused to train with me, I still get the jokes laughed in my face and the looks behind my back. It's not fair or right or something anybody should live with. But all I can do is be better than them, kiddo. Be better and, where I can, protect those who need it. We’re gonna get the sons-a-bitches who did this and you’re gonna see how pathetic they really are.”

His mother's life support was turned off six days later. And though the cashier got a good look at the two men who’d run from the dying body of Erik’s mother, and fingerprints were lifted from the stolen bag, no suspects were ever found. 

This was Erik’s first experience with the police beyond the television or a movie screen. It would not be his last – he accrued a significant juvenile record over the next few years. He spent most nights away from home and scraped through high school with barely passing grades. But it was Constable Jube he thought of when his father died suddenly of a heart attack, leaving him enough liquid assets to pursue whatever studies he wanted. He had to retake some of his exams and go through extensive psych testing to prove his ‘difficult phase’ was over, but eventually he was accepted into the city’s academy.

Erik had killed his mother, but maybe if he spent the rest of his life protecting innocents like her, maybe some of the guilt would go away.

\---

Moira and Erik circled through the trees and made their approach along the back of an overgrown hornbeam hedge. They watched the house for almost ten long minutes until they were absolutely sure no one was going to appear. The only vantage point they couldn’t account for was a window on the ground floor completely taped over with fresh newspaper, with bars installed on the outside. If the killer was peering through gaps in the paper the detectives would simply have to take their chances. They darted for the back door. 

Erik shunted the lock open with a flick of his fingers and went in first, feeling for the metal of weapons ahead. There was only the body-warmed mechanisms in Moira’s holstered gun, which she drew as she entered behind him.

They were in a barren kitchen, shelves and nooks stripped of everything except an ancient white oven. In one corner, however, were plastic shopping bags of fresh food and instant meals, and an unwashed pot in the sink. Erik stood in front of the far door and listened for a few seconds before he pushed it open. The corridor was empty.

As he stepped into it, voices exploded in his head. He clutched the wall for support and gasped. Moira’s hand was on his shoulder, massaging deep into his muscles.

“One of you shut up!” he hissed, and both voices drained away. He clutched frantically for the vanishing comfort of Charles, but only the woman’s telepathic summoning returned. Charles wanted him to help her first, damn the bighearted idiot.

“There’s more than one?” Moira said almost under her breath, staring at his face.

Erik nodded, rubbing the heel of his hand into his temple. “It’s Frost. She’s alive!”

“Jesus Christ,” Moira glanced down the corridor, and followed in Erik’s footsteps as he hurried forward.

He stopped at a door that had no built-in lock, but three shining steel bolts were recently installed. He shot them all back with wave of his hand and shoved the door inwards.

The room was large and lit by seventies-era orange shades over the ceiling bulbs. In here were the windows that had been plastered over with newspaper, letting in only a dull glow. There was the sour, musky smell of unwashed human bodies and urine, but only faintly. A woman he recognised from photographs as Emma Frost, in jeans and an old sorority sweatshirt, stood beside an unmade double bed. Her feet and hands were cuffed and both cuffs were tied to the bed frame by a few feet of padlocked chain, giving her the motility to stretch her limbs and use the nearby bucket but not reach the door or windows. Apart from a week-old bruise around one eye and hair desperately in need of a comb, she looked unharmed.

“Hello, Detectives,” Emma said with a raised brow, like a woman who hadn’t been wearing the same clothes and shitting in a bucket for three weeks. Her eyes twitched upwards. “He’s coming.”

Erik crossed the room. He grabbed the chain that kept her hands tied to the bed and twisted it between two hands as if wringing a sponge. The steel crumpled like a paper Christmas chain and the links clattered to the floor.

Moira had followed him in, but out of the corner of his eye he saw her raise her gun. He turned even as he heard the warning cry. "Erik!"

In the doorway was Lyle Albertine. The edges of Erik's vision bled black as his blood surged through his chest. He took a step away from the bed where Emma was trying to direct his attention to the chain still linking her ankles to the bed.

"Don't move," Moira snarled, aiming at the centre of Albertine's forehead.

“Agent MacTaggert, it’s nice to meet you,” Albertine said, “Here's a reward for your good work,” he tossed something that was already in his hand in Moira’s direction, but she didn’t move an inch to catch it. Erik heard a ring of keys clatter to the ground.

“I am not playing your games,” Moira cocked the gun. “Hands on your head.”

"You won't kill an unarmed man," Albertine said with a smile. "Mr Lehnsherr, though - he might."

Erik took another step away from the bed. He was already feeling for the metal on Albertine's body, but he couldn't get a hold of it - there didn't seem to be a single scrap, even though he was wearing a watch. Erik couldn't even feel the distant pulse of iron in his blood. What the hell was this guy?

“Remember me?” Albertine asked.

Erik didn’t answer. He didn’t think that if he opened his mouth any words would come out, only a bestial roar. 

"I remember you, Mr Lehnsherr. I've been remembering you a lot since I got out of prison. It's funny how much you can find out about a person from the internet," Albertine smirked. "Their whole life. Their marriage. Their career. Even their mother's death."

"Shut the hell up," Moira barked, glancing at Erik. "Or I swear to God, I'll put you down."

But Charles had said the man couldn’t be harmed by weapons, and he hadn’t even flinched at the cocking of Moira’s gun.

Albertine jerked his chin at Erik. "I doubt you even know why she was at the support centre. Did your father tell you she was pregnant? No - I can see he didn't. All the medical records are there. She went to the centre to get the foetus tested. See if it was going to end up as much a freak as her son,” he spat the word ‘freak’ and the light fittings, Emma’s chains and even the gun in Moira’s hands all trembled. “You can imagine she would have terminated as soon as the test came back positive."

_Erik,_ Charles' voice in his head fluttered frantically. _He's trying to provoke you. Don't give him what he wants._

"Erik, don't react to his bullshit," Moira echoed over top of Charles.

"But I know who killed her," Albertine continued, with smug inflections. "Who beat her to death behind that food court. All the classified reports they kept quiet are digital now, the ones the press never learned about, that your father was never told about. The dates and the euphemisms in the disciplinary action records that just happen to line up to the hour your mother walked out of the mutant nest. The cops started to clean up their act after that little disaster, of course. Pregnant mother beaten to death, that doesn’t sit right even to the big bosses who protected her killers. They started hiring more mutants. Made a certain pair of detectives the media face of the new police force. But it wasn't a pair of drugged-up thieves who killed her, Mr Lehnsherr, it was two upstanding, off-duty police officers in a department that was just oh-so- _notorious_ for being a corrupt bunch of bigots. I bet she brought it on herself, I bet she had a big mouth like your husband and said something rude to them and that's why they smashed her skull open on the edge of a garbage skip-”

Erik roared and lunged at Albertine. Moira and Charles screamed at him, two voices inside his head and in his ears, but he didn't listen. Didn't care. The bastard had taken his husband and infected his life and Erik would kill him. Right here, right now. It would be easy to call it self-defence when, even unarmed, Albertine was a dangerous mutant.

Like a freight train he pursued Albertine down the corridor, sliding around the corner to see the man bolting upstairs. He followed with thumping footsteps, pivoted around the banister and grabbed the back of Albertine’s grey suit-jacket as he tried to dart into the nearest room. He hauled him back until he stumbled into reach. Erik grabbed his lapels and slammed him into the wall. He drew back a fist that a moment later met Albertine’s face so hard Erik saw a piece of tooth fly out in a spray of blood.

“Wait, wait,” Albertine wasn’t struggling, and Erik did pause, wanting the man to fight, needing a battle to fuel his bloodlust. But Albertine just smoothed the fringe out of his high-cheeked face.

“Why?” Erik bellowed at him, his spit flecking into Albertine’s eyes and making the man blink. “Why the hell did you choose me?”

“You put me in that hole,” Albertine wheezed. He was smiling. His teeth looked intact now. His mouth wasn’t even bloody. Erik recognised, on a distant, sensible plane of consciousness that was miles away from his motor control, that this was odd. “I gave you the tape that put May’s killers away. You know I did. But you didn’t tell anyone and I got eighteen months in minimum security. Do you know what it’s like to be a mutant-killer in prison, Mr Lehnsherr? All the others, the ones who got years, they were in high-security wings where mutant crims are held separate from us regular folks, but I was in with every type. For eighteen months.”

Erik drew back his fist again. “You deserved everything you got,” he hissed.

Albertine was still smiling. The weird thing was, the shirt balled in Erik’s hand seemed to be slipping through his fingers like the sheerest silk and the chest under his knuckles was bowing in as if it was filled with air instead of meat and bones, and there was a stabbing headache growing behind his crimson rage, and the sensible plane of consciousness was crying out for him to run, or maybe that was Charles in his head, but either way he knew he wouldn’t stop until Albertine was dead-

\---

Moira hesitated for about half a second before she followed Erik. Emma Frost was dragging desperately on the remaining chain and begging her to stay, but Moira’s training told her to neutralise the threat before she tended to civilians. Erik had relayed something from Charles about the gunman’s mutation repelling weapons, but Erik was her partner and she had to protect him first. Without really thinking about it, she scooped up the ring of keys that Albertine had tossed at her and stuffed them into her pocket. 

She sprinted the length of the house and checked every downstairs room – all empty and barren of furniture – before she heard the creak of footsteps above. She swore colourfully and ran to the bottom of the stairs, calling Erik’s name.

“I’m okay,” he yelled back. He sounded strained and there was a thump as if a body had been thrown hard against a wall. “I’m fine, help Charles,” floated down in the same stretched voice.

Moira bit her lip and then backed up. There was a strange tug in her mind that she had never felt before but that she knew must be Erik’s telepath husband. The first door at the bottom of the stairs had a thick, old lock on it. Moira fumbled for the keys. There were four of them labelled with taped-down paper, numbered (1) to (4). The first was a chunky skeleton key that looked about as old as the lock; it slid in with some wiggling and she opened the door to find a cramped, windowless room that seemed to be storage for the remaining furniture.

Curled in the corner, wearing only a loose dress shirt and his boxers, his wrists and ankles cuffed, was Charles. Moira had met him many times in her years of working with Erik, but almost didn’t recognise him beneath the bruises and panic on his face. His fingers were pressed to his forehead as he fought the repressing drug. His eyes were squeezed closed, but snapped open as she entered.

“Agent MacTaggert,” he struggled to his feet, clinging to the wall. Dried blood covered his hands. “Help me.”

“I’m here,” she crossed the room, holstering her gun and spinning the ring to find the second key, which she recognised as a handcuff master key. “Don’t worry.”

“No, you don’t understand,” Charles was shuddering as he held out his wrists for her to unlock the cuffs. Moira swallowed as she saw the mutilated gap where his fingers had been. “It’s Erik. I can’t feel his mind.”

Moira knelt to unlock the cuffs around his ankles. “What do you mean?”

“He’s gone,” Charles whispered as she stood. He took a step away from the wall and she wrapped her arms around him, helping him cross the room in shaking steps. He was limping heavily and she saw that his left knee was huge and swollen. “He’s gone – Moira, his mind, he was so angry that he left me, he went past the room and _left me in there_ – oh God, where is he?”

“I just spoke to him,” Moira said distractedly. She drew her gun and went out first to check the coast was clear, then reached back to support Charles down the corridor to the bedroom where Emma was waiting.

She couldn’t hear anything from upstairs. Charles had to be mistaken. Erik was fine.

“Charles, I presume,” Emma said as they entered. “You’re sensing-”

“Yes,” Charles cut her off.

“There’s more.”

“Show me.”

Moira let Charles go while she unlocked Emma’s bonds, and he wandered straight to the bed and sat down on it, pressing both hands to his temples. She had assumed that key number three would be important here, but it didn’t fit the chain padlock; the same one that had unlocked Charles’ cuffs worked on both pairs of Emma’s. Emma wasn’t even looking at her. The woman had her eyes closed and her head turned towards Charles. _Bloody exclusive telepathy_ , Moira thought with intentional loudness in the hopes they both heard her and told her what was going on. She was still pumped-up and desperate to close this thing off, to confirm that Erik had dealt with the killer and they could get out of here.

As she stood up, she jumped when Charles grabbed her elbow and levered himself to his feet. Moira looked around. Erik was standing in the doorway.

“You’re alright,” she felt herself melt a little with relief. “How did you restrain him?”

“Oh, Mr Lehnsherr’s a kitten when you know which brain regions to suppress,” Erik smiled, tilting his head to tap his forehead lightly.

Charles let out a noise that was almost a word but mostly a grief-stricken scream, and threw himself at Erik before Moira had even begun to process what he’d said. Erik stepped back and dragged the door closed. Charles crashed into it, but the first bolt was sliding home before he could even snatch the handle, and the click of the next two bars came a second later.

_“No!”_ Charles howled. _“No, no, fight him, Erik! Fight him!”_

Moira could hear Erik laughing on the far side. Cold treacle seemed to be filling her limbs up. Charles slid to his knees, still pressed against the door.

“Give him back. Give him back, you bastard, don’t do this.”

“Ciao, my little mice,” Erik’s voice replied, muffled and retreating. “You can find your own way out.”

Charles leaned his head against the door, his undamaged hand clenching and unclenching against the wood above him. He opened his eyes and turned his head slowly to look at Emma. “You let this happen.”

“I didn’t know,” Emma said, her lips pinched and small. She was sitting on the bed, rubbing her raw wrists. “He left my head so quietly.”

Moira thought she understood. She’d realised just fallen out of the real world and into the wonderland that mutants lived in all the time, the land of magical powers and impossible crimes. Of course she saw glimpses of that world, when Erik absentmindedly opened car doors without touching them or when they got called in to piece together what should have been a simple domestic disturbance, but it turned out somebody’s plasma-bolts had got out of hand, or somebody’s life-sucking abilities had suddenly manifested. But she’d never been over her head.

And now it was just her, two exhausted telepaths and a serial killer who was inside her partner’s body like a puppeteer.

“He wanted me to join the game,” Moira said numbly, as Charles turned his drained face towards the door. “He said he’d make me kill Erik. This is how he's going to do it.”

\---

Albertine made sure to deadlock all the doors behind him as he left the house. He skipped down the stairs and headed up the hill, holding his hands in front of him to admire them. He flexed detective Lehnsherr’s long fingers. A strong body, if a little thin. How strange to be in another person’s body. Emma hadn’t counted – Emma had been so walled up behind her telepathic diamonds he’d never stood a chance of putting her to sleep. Not that he’d much have wanted to, inconvenient though it was to tend to a prisoner. His astral projection commanded much more authority. So once he’d got his bearings and reconstructed himself (he’d felt odd afterwards, as if his reach had grown, as if his edges were sharper and his core hollowed) he hadn’t bothered to attempt a siege of her mental barriers.

But the detective had been _easy_.

Everything so far had been easy. Lehnsherr and MacTaggert had come just as he’d hoped, if ahead of schedule. Bringing MacTaggert into the mix had been a stroke of genius. It wasn’t just mutants-against-mutants now. MacTaggert was his black queen on the chessboard, the pennant of humankind in this battlefield. If she was left triumphant, it would prove their superiority. Their purity. His own true place as a human, not an anomaly. 

He still wasn't sure what had freed him from his old reluctance to act on these urges. Something had happened in the old house. Some kind of emergence, revelation, rebirth, whatever you wanted to call it. He used to be so weak, so frightened, but something had broken his chains and made him see that those fears had been nothing but social brainwashing. The world was bursting at the seams and the mutants and queers and Jews and whores, they were just making it worse. If this planet could only support so many, it needed to support the best. Those without flaw, the beautiful few. 

He'd always known this. But for some reason he'd never done anything about it until now. That plastic bitch, she'd been the first, and the painted girl who'd ruined her skin. And then the mutants, because they were the worst, they could pass their warped bodies on to their spawn. He hadn't been sure whether he could bring himself to hurt Emma, once he no longer needed her; she was a perfectly specimen of humanity on the outside. But inside... like the pervert Lehnsherr, like the wolf-girl who could pretend to be human... yes, in the end they would all need to be culled. Regretful. 

Albertine stopped at the top of the hill, under the contorted branches of a winter-bare rowan. He settled down, tucked the detective's coat under his seat and stretched Lehnsherr's long legs in front of him. He’d been lucky to get them all into the right room. He might have had to trick MacTaggert into returning to Emma, or drag the pillow-biting, science-worshipping telepath in after her. That would have lacked the poetry of catching them all in the trap together, of their own volition. And MacTaggert had the keys. He knew exactly how she would act now he’d laid the labyrinth down for her.

Poetry. Art. Beauty. Humanity versus the deviations. The black queen couldn’t protect the white pieces anymore – it was unnatural that she had ever protected them. But the board was set.

He reached into the detective’s pocket and found a packet with only two cigarettes left in it. He tapped one out and lit it, cupping his hand around the flame until the tip glowed. He’d missed this. The physiological rush of the smoke’s drug hitting his lungs – he didn’t get that when he was projecting. It was all an illusion then.

As always, he was troubled that he couldn’t remember where he’d put his body. He must be sleeping somewhere. At Nina’s, perhaps. He had a vague memory that he said he’d go there once he left Emma’s house. Sensible of him to tuck his body away somewhere that no one could find it, while he hitchhiked on the minds of others. Yes, sensible. He was sleeping somewhere.

He wished he could remember where.

_Leave it alone,_ he told himself. He dragged on the cigarette and leaned back on his other hand, watching the house, waiting for the last moves to be played.

\---


	7. springing the trap / finale

_Alright, Moira._

_Keep it together. You're a cop, nothing fazes you. Not even utterly insane mutant shit. You work with a guy who bends paperclips with his brain and breaks into half a conversation with himself when his husband's waiting in the lobby six floors below._

_Yes. This is normal. Normal for Emma and Charles, at the very least - and the part with the serial killers, that's normal for you. This is what you do. Now keep the civilians from panicking, find a way out and you'll all be fine._

_And you are not going to have to kill Erik._

"Can you stop him, Charles?" she asked, in her best sturdy-police-officer voice. "You're powerful, right? Can you exorcise him telepathically?"

Charles, who was still sitting against the door not looking at anyone, gave a derisive snort. After a moment, Emma elaborated on his silence. "What this guy is using isn't telepathy, Agent MacTaggert - not the way Charles and I are telepaths. Even if the serine inhibitors had completely worn off, the best we could do is barricade our own minds. We can't read his, and we definitely can't influence it."

She had crossed to the back of the room when Erik - or Albertine - had appeared, and now she began tearing down the newspaper over the windows.

"Alright," Moira nodded. "So we find another way, once we've got you two to safety," she stood over Charles and tested the door. It was solid, and there were three bolts on the far side. "My car is down the road. We just have to get out of this room while avoiding Albertine and we'll be fine."

"I'm not leaving Erik," Charles said, raising his head to look at her at last. He took hold of the door handle and hauled himself up, leaning heavily on his good leg.

"You really think you can help him? In your condition? Drugged out of your abilities?" Moira challenged, and he hunched his shoulders. She knew it sounded harsh, but she didn't have time to argue. Every second could be crucial for their survival. And frankly? If she could only save one man, she'd rather face Charles' wrath than Erik's.

She leaned over him to run her fingers down the gap between the door and the frame. It was too small to work in a wire and try hooking the bolts open. And there were bars over the windows. There had to be another way out. She glanced around the room. There was nothing but an old-fashioned air vent barely larger than her palm. And then her eyes fell on the outline of a small door, barely higher than her knees, that was camouflaged into the wallpaper. There was a latch but not - as far as she could see - a lock.

"Does that open?" she asked, pointing at the door.

Emma glanced around. "I couldn't reach it when I was chained up like a dog," she said coolly, "but Lyle told me not to go near it. He said he'd booby-trapped it."

“Damn. He might not be lying. We raided his hideout early this morning, and there was a trap waiting there that nearly killed his latest abductee,” Moira hurried over and crouched by the door, brushing her fingers around the edges. "Where does it go?"

"Nowhere. There used to be a goods lift to the coal cellar, but my mother took the lift out when she renovated this into a bedroom," Emma turned to look out the cleared window, shoving aside the scraps of newspaper she'd torn down. "Lyle is watching the house.”

“What’s he doing?” Moira looked up with wide eyes.

“Watching the house,” Emma repeated, more slowly, and narrowed her eyes at Moira. “Well, officer? What’s your plan?”

Moira flicked up the latch on the old door, pried it an inch with her fingernails, and then leaned back and kicked it open. There was no whizz of spring-loaded ninja stars or a wire-tripped shotgun blast. She peered into the dark cavity. At the top, almost in line with her eyes, was the remains of old machinery – little more than a few bolts and an empty pulley – and below that the darkness dropped away for at least a storey.

“Alright,” Moira licked her lips. “Do either of you know how to safely operate a handgun?”

Emma raised her hand, and Charles shrugged, jerking his head at her. Moira took out her weapon and placed it butt-first into Emma’s outstretched hand. 

“You can do your telepathy thing if you want me to come back, so don’t fire this unless necessary,” she warned. “Necessary means if Albertine makes _any_ threat towards you or Charles, understand?”

She didn’t look at Charles as she said this, but Emma nodded and expertly checked the remaining bullets in the magazine. Moira took off her jacket and stretched her arms into the gaping space of the lift shaft. It was about an arm span by width and length, and she’d been a good rock climber in her rookie days. Hopefully it would all come back to her.

“Stay in my head,” she told Charles. “If I can find a safe exit, I’ll wait for you to follow.”

He gave her a wan smile. Moira took one last look at the two battered telepaths and then inched her way into the shaft. Once she had one leg and a shoulder over the empty space, she pressed herself against the walls and shifted until she was maintaining a steady bridge. Her calves were already beginning to shake. Bridging down was considerably harder than bridging up, but she bolstered herself with her arms on the other two walls and began to make her way down. Thank God she’d worn rubber-soled sneakers today instead of her slippery flats. 

Her eyes adjusted quickly, but she couldn’t see the floor at all. However, she realised by the echoes of her shuffling body that she’d overestimated the drop. After only a few minutes she could reach down with own hand and feel the dusty metal floor where the goods lift had once rested. With a long sigh – her abdomen was beginning to cramp from the strain of keeping her body rigid – she lowered herself down and shifted into a crouch.

“I’m okay,” she looked up to see both Emma and Charles leaning over the shaft. “Keep your eyes on the windows and doors, make sure you know where Albertine is.”

They both disappeared after some hesitation. Moira explored the bottom of the shaft. She could feel the outline of another small door, probably similar to the one above. It wouldn't budge when she pushed it, however. Maybe latched from the outside. Moira patted down her shirt until she found her cellphone in her breast pocket. Albertine already knew they were here, so there was no harm in switching it on. She checked for a signal hopefully, but they were still way out of cellphone range. Instead she used the screen as a torch to inspect the door in front of her.

It was small, like the one above, but it had a modern deadlock, shining blue off her phone’s backdrop. She brushed away a little sawdust from the floor beneath her feet. This was definitely new. Another part of Albertine’s promised game?

“Charles,” Moira tilted her head back. “Charles, throw down the keys.”

After a moment his silhouette appeared above. “Ready?”

“Just drop them.”

He did so. Moira realised she couldn’t make out in the slightest where they were going to fall and put her hands over her head. The ring of keys bounced painfully off one elbow and clinked on the metal floor. She called her thanks and picked them up to check them with her phone.

The key labelled (3) looked like a standard house key. She pinched it between her fingers and inserted it into the new lock.

It slid in without a squeak and turned easily. Moira took a breath to steel herself. If there was some kind of trap on the far side, she had nowhere to go.

She pushed the door open. It moved reluctantly, but smoothly enough. There was no click of a crossbow trigger or a waiting landmine. She raised her phone and blinked until the shape of the room beyond resolved itself. It was a small cellar, the concrete walls stained black with years of coal dust. Slowly she emerged and stood up. The ceiling very nearly brushed her head, but the room was much wider than it was long. Behind her, the lift shaft and what looked like a large, closed cupboard interrupted the foundations of the house. In front of her was a third door, above a step that raised it slightly off the floor. Through a tiny crack above this door Moira could see fading daylight.

She stepped fully into the cellar. Behind her, the door to the goods lift swung shut on a hydraulic closer, clearly another recent installation. Moira swore and crouched to rattle the handle on this side. It wouldn’t open – but she could get access to the lock easily, and she had the keys.

She stood up again, checking the room for any machinery or other visible traps. It seemed to be empty. Finally, as she brought the light from her phone back around to the exit, she saw the canvas pocket nailed to the back. She frowned and stepped up to look inside. There was a black walkie-talkie sitting at the bottom.

Moira glared at it. So Albertine had wanted someone to come down here after all – and since he’d given her the keys, maybe it was specifically her who was supposed to reach the cellar. Well, she wasn’t going to play by his rules. No way was she going to touch that radio and let him know what they were up to. She pulled out the keys again and tried number four in the outer lock, but it didn’t fit – in fact, number four was another old skeleton key that looked like it belonged with the original house. She tried number three and it slid into the exit easily.

The phone in her hand began to ring. Moira got such a fright she dropped it, screen-side down, and had to fumble in the dark until her hands touched the tiny gleam of light. She picked it up and looked at the display.

**ERIK LEHNSHERR CALLING**

“Fuck,” Moira hissed. “Fuck you,” she considered it for half a second, then hit ‘answer’ and put the phone to her ear.

“Getting bored already?” she snapped.

“Agent MacTaggert,” Erik’s voice crooned, but the tone was hideously unfamiliar. She knew without any doubt that it was not her partner speaking. “I haven’t seen you through the window for some time now. Are you in the cellar?”

“Nice try, but I’m long gone,” Moira sneered. “My backup will be here in five minutes. You better put your stolen hands on the back of your stolen head, because I’m going to be shoving your stolen body into the back of a cop car and if you don’t get out of Erik’s brain I’m gonna-”

“Kill both the mutants above you?” Albertine cut her off. Moira fell silent, gritting her teeth. “I assure you, Agent MacTaggert, that is the only thing you are going to do in the near future if you don’t listen to me. I know exactly where you are. And you’ve gone down alone, of course, to check the path is safe for the hostages.”

Moira frowned. Inside she thought, _Are you hearing this, Charles?_

There came a bare flutter of an answer, as if from an immense distance. _I’m hearing it._

“Well, unless you’re a walking short-range transmitter like myself, of course,” Albertine chuckled. “You _could_ have called me on the walkie-talkie, but no, I bet you were going to go straight ahead and open the back door, weren’t you?”

“Tell me the game,” Moira growled. “You want me to kill Erik, don’t you? So tell me how it works. I’ll play,” _And I’ll break your damn rules,_ she added in her head.

“It’s simple. You can open the door behind you, leading back to the lift shaft and the two freaks, or you can open the door in front of you, leading to the outside and freedom.”

She glanced over her shoulder, though there was not a scrap of light to see by. “What’s the catch?”

“Take a sniff.”

Moira breathed in. Shit. _Shit_. A pungent memory of school chemistry labs flooded through her head. Gas – the room filling with gas. Now she focused, she wondered if she could even hear the hiss of a pipe. Shit!

“The bedroom is also filling with butane as we speak,” Erik’s voice intoned. There was not even a mocking note of humour in it now. Moira heard Charles give a burst of telepathy that sounded like the mental equivalent of every swear word he knew blended together. Moira heard a bark of speech from upstairs, and the residual connection echoed his words, _Emma, the vent, cover the vent!_

“The ignition mechanism is, of course, in the ventilation shaft of the upstairs bedroom,” Albertine purred. “And will be triggered by the opening of either door. So please, Agent MacTaggert, make the sensible choice and come outside to join me. Leave the freaks to burn.”

The phone pipped to signal the call was disconnected. Moira sucked in a breath and immediately tasted gas in the back of her throat. She swore and ripped off her shirt, wrapping it around her mouth and tying the sleeves behind her head. If she went through the outer door alone, Charles and Emma would be trapped in an inferno. If she opened the inner door to let them escape, all three of them might be engulfed. He was trying to make her choose her own life over theirs - Fuck. Fuck. _Fuck_. And every second she waited, more gas was pumped into the room. Was she already feeling woozy? How long before she couldn’t think clearly? Before she couldn’t even stand up?

“Fuck you, you fucking-!” she couldn’t even think of an epithet vile enough for Albertine.

“Charles!” she crouched by the goods lift door, frantically trying to figure out how it was supposed to trigger the ignition switch, how to disable the connection. She couldn’t see any modifications beyond the closer and the new lock. Perhaps it had been on the inside, perhaps she’d missed it in her haste. “Charles, break the window, block the gas, whatever you can!”

 _We’re already on it,_ he replied, just as there were several cracks of successive panes of glass being shattered and a shower of clatters from upstairs.

Moira stood up and began searching the walls for a switch, a wire, anything. She felt like her limbs were drifting, and she smiled convulsively. Euphoria – first sign of butane poisoning.

 _You’ve got to get out,_ Charles insisted, _Moira, you’ve got to get out before you faint. The longer you leave it, the more gas is building up in both rooms._

“Get down into the shaft,” Moira had reached the only door she hadn’t tested yet, the one she’d taken to be a cupboard. The gas tanks had to be hidden somewhere – maybe in here, maybe she could switch them off. She pulled the keys out of her pocket and they slid from her fingers and clattered on the floor. She crouched and swept her hands across the dust, her heart racing. “Both of you, get into the shaft. If I open the inner door, maybe you can get out before the fire reaches this room.”

_We can’t risk that!_

Emma’s mental voice broke into the conversation. _We’re coming down the shaft. Open the outer door. Without air flow between the two rooms, we might be far enough away from the immolation to survive._

Immolation. Moira found herself giggling. What a strange word. Oh, God, she was already feeling dizzy. She found the keys at last and pushed the fourth one into the cupboard door. She pulled it open.

A stench much worse than the gas poured out across her, and something moist and vaguely human-shaped fell out into Moira’s arms. She clutched at it, momentarily convinced she’d found another hostage. But the skin was cold and bloated, and the smell of decay was overwhelming. She dropped the body, gagging behind her makeshift mask, and held up her phone to peer into the cupboard. Sure enough, there were four gas tanks almost as tall as her – but their wheels were padlocked in place. She grasped them and tried uselessly to turn them and then to make one of the keys fit the padlock. Finally she simply kicked them as hard as she could.

“I’m not playing!” she yelled, muffled through her shirt. She felt like she couldn’t get enough oxygen and tried not to breathe too deep. “I’m not playing your damn game!”

There was a thump from somewhere inside the wall, and then another thump and a yelp of pain.

 _We’re down,_ Charles called inside her mind. _We’re in the shaft, we’re covered as best we can. Open the outer door._

“Erik will kill me if you die,” Moira cried.

 _I’ll have stern words with him if he does,_ Charles assured her. _Open the door, Moira! Before this gets any worse!_

She stumbled to the exit, dropping her phone from her weakening hands. She didn’t pick it up, inserting the third key by feel. By some miracle, it went in at the second jab. She grabbed the handle, twisted it and shoved the door open as fast as she could.

The sunset burst across her face so blinding that she shut her eyes tight against its agonising glow and just ran, tripping on knee-high grass and broken paving stones, one hand pulling her shirt away from her mouth to suck in clean, pure air and the other stretched in front of her as if waiting for a collision, and behind her was silence, silence-

There was a _whoomph_ like a huge sail unfurling, and then a much louder explosion as the fire reached the butane tanks. It pummelled her ears like a physical blow. A wave of heat and pressure hit Moira’s back. She fell, half from the shock as much from the concussion force, and lay with her face in the grass, waiting for the sear of her burned flesh or the pain of debris burying into her torso. Her skin stung and there was a patter like hail. She raised her head as glowing ashes drifted down around her. 

A hunk of wood landed a few feet away with a thump. Moira flinched pushed herself to her feet and turned back. Her shirt hung from one hand, leaving her in only her bra and trousers. Her shoulders and the back of her neck felt as if they had been badly sunburned.

The cellar was a ravaged crater. One corner of the old house leaned over it, weatherboards steadily pulling away from each other as the weight overcame them. Fire gushed from the window of the master bedroom. The bars that had covered it were hanging off at an extreme angle. The cellar itself was black and the walls around were ringed in flames. The cupboard where the butane cylinders had sat was completely demolished.

Moira staggered back towards the house, shading her face from the heat that blew off it in waves. Through the broken outer wall, she couldn’t make out where the door of the goods lift had been. She didn’t even know if she could get much closer without the heat overwhelming her. The smoke was already making her eyes stream.

“Charles!” she screamed as loud as she could. “Emma!”

A piece of debris was rolling off the wall. No – the debris was moving away from it. In fact, it was sort of running lopsidedly. It was two people wrapped in the thick wool blanket from the upstairs bed, one of them limping heavily while the other dragged him along. They shouldered through the smouldering remains of the outside door and bolted away from the wreckage. As soon as they’d gone a few feet, Emma threw the blanket off. Her sorority jersey was burning merrily down the length of one arm.

Without thinking about her overwhelming awe, Moira grabbed Charles’ arm and hauled him away. “Get down, Emma!” she yelled, and the woman dropped to the grass and rolled, patting her sleeve frantically. Moira shoved Charles on a little further and went back to pick her up under her unburned arm, pulling her away from the heat. She wrapped herself around Charles as she reached him and pulled them both along - a hobbling, coughing, six-legged creature - until the heat of the burning house was only a gentle warmth on her skin. Then all three of them staggered to a halt.

Charles and Emma glanced back at the house. They were sooty and bruised, bleeding in a couple of new places, but Emma’s burn seemed to be the worst fresh injury.

“Two metres of concrete foundation between us and the tanks,” Charles wheezed. “Worst part was trying to get through the door to escape before the oxygen was gone. Emma kicked it open.”

“In that tiny shaft?” Moira, bending over to support herself on her knees as she panted for breath, looked up at Emma with wide eyes.

“I have very strong thighs,” Emma gasped, looking at her arm with a hiss. She reached around to the back of her jeans and held out Moira’s gun. “Here. I don’t need a magazine of bullets near me if there’s another explosion, thank you.”

Moira laughed and checked the safety before she tucked the gun into her own belt. Her holster was somewhere in the wreckage, discarded when she’d turned her shirt into a mask. The shirt itself was still clutched in her hand, decorated with several new shades of black soot, brown dirt and even a little of Emma’s blood. She pulled the sleeves over her arms, wincing as the material raked over her hot, raw skin. She was going to be sleeping on her stomach for a week.

She heard Charles give a low rumble and turned to follow his gaze.

Erik’s shape stood fifty feet away at the top of the nearby hill, his hands in his pockets and his coat whipping out behind him in the wind. The sun was setting at his back. He was watching them as he flicked a cigarette butt into the grass, waiting for their next move.

“Come on,” Moira drew her lips back from her teeth and reached for her gun. “We’re not going to break our winning streak now.”

\--- 

They headed up the hill three abreast, Charles shaking his head at Emma when she glanced at his bad knee. He had two fingers to his temple and beads of sweat on his forehead. The look in his eyes would be literally deadly if he weren’t on the serine inhibitors, Moira as pretty sure of that. The butchered hand had broken open and was dripping crimson onto the grass as they ascended towards the tree and the man beneath it. 

Moira held her gun steady, pointing at the ground.

 _”If you win my game,”_ Albertine had said, the first time he spoke to her on the phone what seems like a month ago but was only a few hours, _”You get to kill Mr Lehnsherr for me._ ”

Moira kept her eyes locked on Erik’s face. It wasn’t smiling. It was sort of leering, but there was a flash of panic there too. The grass rustled around their legs. Albertine didn’t try to run. Perhaps he still had a few more traps up his sleeves.

Moira stopped ten feet in front of Erik’s stolen body. The wooziness of the butane seemed to have been blasted out of her by adrenaline and pain. She was acutely aware of her skin and every muscle twitching her body. She kept her gun lowered.

“Let him go, Lyle,” she said.

Charles took a couple of steps forward, eyes narrowed, but whatever he was trying to do it didn’t have any effect. Emma stayed back, holding her burned arm.

Albertine spread his – Erik’s – arms. “I’m right here, Agent MacTaggert. You can end this.”

“I’m not going to shoot you,” Moira said in a thin voice. “I’m not going to kill him.”

Albertine lowered his arms. His top lip twitched. Then he burst out, with a spray of spittle, “You were supposed to win! You were supposed to prove it! Prove humanity is _right!_ That I,” he slammed his hands against his chest, “am human! But you let these freaks live!”

Emma shook her head. “You’re mixed up, sweetie. Your head’s got bits missing, Lyle. I can help you.”

“Shut up!” Albertine stabbed a forefinger at Emma. “You- you ruined me- you gave me this disease-”

“It’s not a disease,” Charles called. “It’s who you are.”

Albertine shook his head, a broad, shaking smile spreading across his face. “I’m going now,” he said, taking a step backwards. “I’m leaving. If you follow me, I’ll electrocute Mr Lehnsherr’s brainstem. I’m going,” he repeated, swaying a little as he walked backwards. “You can’t stop me.”

“Why did you give me the fourth key?” Moira yelled.

Albertine stopped. His arms hung slack by his side. Erik’s eyes bulged at her. “There was no fourth key.”

“Of course there was a fourth key,” Moira frowned. “It opened the cupboard in the cellar. There was a body in that cupboard – was that your body, Mr Albertine?”

He stared at her. “My body’s asleep somewhere. I can’t-” his brow tightened, a look of utter confusion twisting Erik’s features, “-I’ll remember when I need to-”

“You gave Moira the key,” Emma told him. “Some part of you wants to remember.”

“Your body is a charred skeleton back in the house by now,” Moira broke in. “You’ve been dead for more than three weeks, Mr Albertine.”

He shook his head. “No,” he dug his hands through his hair. “There wasn’t a fourth key. I don’t remember a fourth key. I – why would I give you a fourth key? _No!_ ”

“Erik!” Charles cried, staggering forward, “Do it! Now!”

Albertine’s stolen mouth gaped open. His back arched and his shoulders hunched up and back like a cartoon of a man struck by lightning. His arms bent in towards his chest, he gave a single convulsion, and then crumpled. He landed on his hands and knees, head bent and lungs gasping for air.

Charles limped towards him, Emma following in long strides. Moira stepped over last, keeping her grip steady on her gun.

\---

Erik reached up and gripped Charles’ arm. Slowly, aching in every joint, he pulled himself to his feet. His vision was flickering through what looked like black ice floes. He could feel Charles’ shoulder under his hand, and the warm coupling of him inside his mind. Through his clearing vision, he glimpsed blue eyes and a mouth he’d noticed right across the room the first day they had met. Charles’ arm was now around his waist somehow, under his jacket, and was digging fingers into the muscle of Erik’s back.

“Are you alright?” Erik asked.

Charles gave a spluttering laugh. “Yes.”

Erik could see him properly at last. He caught hold of Charles’ left hand in both of his own, cupped around the hideous wound. “We… we’ve got your fingers on ice… we’ll get them to the hospital…”

“I don’t care about my fingers,” Charles pressed his face into Erik’s neck. Their skin stuck slick together with two layers of drying sweat. Charles' hair smelled of smoke and blood. Erik looked down the hill and blinked to see Frost’s house burning around a gaping hole in its side. What had happened? The last thing he remembered was chasing Albertine upstairs. Charles’ good hand crawled back around Erik’s heaving ribs and pressed against his chest. He drew back to look Erik in the eye.

“You left me,” Charles shook his head, a sharp line appearing between his brows. “You ran past the room and I was _right there_ , I was telling you to stop.”

Erik remembered rage and the thud of his footsteps on a wooden floor and the sight of a grey jacket vanishing around the corner. He smoothed Charles’ fringe out of his eyes. “He took you,” he whispered. “I had to kill him.”

“You’re such a…” Charles took a shivering breath and pressed himself full against Erik’s body, chest to chest and both arms wrapped so tight around him that Erik felt new aches making themselves known in his ribs and spine. Charles didn’t finish the sentence. Erik heard in his mind, _idiotworryprickbastardperfectman_.

In the distance there was sirens. Erik looked over his husband’s shoulder to take in the sight of Moira, blackened with soot and with several buttons missing on her shirt, and Frost wincing as she turned to look out over the road.

“Oh, thank God,” Moira grinned, looking back at Erik.

“What did you do?” Erik glared at her.

“I left a note on Cassidy’s desk asking him to meet me at my locker at four. And I taped an envelope with his name on it to my locker,” Moira raised her eyebrows at him. “It kinda had everything that happened written down inside. I told him to get a squad and an ambulance together and come find us.”

\---

Erik massaged the bridge of his nose. McCone had left off shouting at him for a few moments while he turned around to shout at Moira, who had arrived at their side with a foil emergency blanket wrapped around her torso. The sun had well and truly set now and the forensic teams were standing around the Frost house watching the roof collapse in over basically all the evidence they might have gleaned from the scene. A fire truck had been called, but it got stuck halfway up the tiny dirt road and had to reverse all the way to the highway. Luckily the wind was dead and rain was forecast around midnight.

Erik really hoped he wasn't still standing here getting reamed out by then.

“So this is what I’m supposed to tell my superiors?” McCone roared. “That some astral-projecting serial killer orchestrated this entire thing, that now he’s completely vanished like a puff of smoke, and that not once did you attempt to tell your colleagues about the fact that you were spying on his behalf?”

“I told Moira,” Erik pointed out.

“And your team will probably find what’s left of Mr Albertine’s body in the wreckage of the cellar,” Moira added, waving her hand in the direction of the house. “If you’re lucky, they won’t even be able to tell he was dead when the explosion happened. You can pretend he was corporeal all along and was killed by his own booby-trap.”

McCone gave a snarl of rage and shook his fist at her. “There will be an investigation,” he said around his trembling lips. “You will both be stood down until it is concluded. I _will_ get every detail of this straightened out, don’t think that I won’t,” with a last stab of his finger at each of their faces, he started to turn away.

“Sir,” Erik cleared his throat. “Can I ask you something? Unrelated to this.”

McCone turned back with a face like a thorn bush. Erik pushed ahead. “Were you in the homicide division twenty-two years ago, sir?”

McCone cocked his head. “What’s that got to do with anything?”

“I just need to know.”

After a moment, his boss shook his head. “I was barely out of the academy back then.”

“Who was in charge? Of homicide.”

McCone looked fit to burst at any second, but he answered. “Bill Stryker. You might remember him – retired with honours seven years ago. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go tell the assault squad they can pack up and go home.”

He headed off to coordinate the return journey. The squad, in full anti-mutant gear, were sitting around drinking coffee over a small gas stove. Erik saw Moira shudder.

She seemed to snap out of it when he looked at her. She held his gaze, “Albertine was a liar, Erik. That stuff about your mother – he would have said anything to get you angry.”

“Maybe,” Erik broke eye contact first and squinted out into the dark of the forest. “And maybe if I’ve got a job at the end of all this, it isn’t one I really want any longer.”

“Are you kidding?” Moira grabbed his elbow. “No way am I letting you off. Erik, even if it’s true – so there were bad cops. There’s bad men in every job. Bad people. Bad mutants. We need the good ones like you to stick with us.”

Erik ducked his head. His gut was full of churning chunks of flint and he’d never been so tired in his life. Or hungry. All he wanted, in fact, was to go home, empty the fridge and cook a three-course meal for him and his husband. And then crawl into bed, one arm keeping Charles close, and sleep for – oh, a year or so ought to do it.

“Oh no,” Erik looked up, and Moira’s hand went at once to the gun still at her belt. He waved her down. “No, it’s just – the ambulance just left! I bloody told them I was coming with them!”

Moira let out a long breath. “Jesus, you scared the shit out of me,” she laughed. “I’m sure Charles won’t get kidnapped again before you reach the hospital. Come on, let’s go see if that fire engine scraped my car on its way out.”

As they walked, Moira pulled the blanket tighter around her body. “One thing I don’t get – how _did_ he just vanish like a puff of smoke? Charles and Emma reckoned they had no chance of overcoming him with their telepathy so – no offence – but how did you do it?”

Erik clicked his tongue. “I don’t remember much after he took over my body,” he shrugged. “But Charles was there the second his control started to slip. He’s the scientist, he put the idea in my head.”

“What idea?”

“Localised EMP to overload his digital form, erase him like blowing a fuse. Albertine and I – our gifts were based on the same fundamental force. Electromagnetism. In a way, he picked the absolute worst person’s body to steal.”

“In a lot of ways,” Moira muttered. Her car was a dark shape by the side of the road. She pulled her keys of her trouser pocket, looked at them with a frown. Erik saw it was a ring of keys of several sizes, none of which would fit into an ignition. Moira’s mouth twisted into a grimace. She drew back her arm and hurled the ring as hard as she could into the forest, so far they couldn’t even hear it whisper as it flew through the branches.

She found her car key in one back pocket and depressed the unlock button. The car beeped cheerily, and the electric headlights winked into the darkness. 

\---

\---

Erik didn't realise he was staring out the apartment window in a daze until there was a series of sharp pains on his hand. He looked down. The butter in the frying pan was spattering out onto his trousers. He hissed and pulled the pan off the element, turning down the heat. He must have drifted off for a couple of minutes at least. He forced himself to focus on the eggs he’d already cracked. Whisking them was just starting to pull him back into the waking world when the phone rang.

Instantly his grip on the whisk tightened until he felt his nails leaving imprints on his palm. His head jerked up and turned towards the sound. He swallowed around a throat that suddenly felt parched. Should he put down the bowl? He didn’t want to answer it. He didn’t think he could make words.

The ringing stopped, and at the other end of the apartment, he heard Charles talking. His shoulders slumped.

Charles was still on the phone when Erik arrived in the bedroom with two plates of French toast with boysenberries and cinnamon. His husband was leaning against the bureau, crutch propped under one arm and the phone held between his shoulder and ear as he flicked through a review draft in his hands. The bruises still stood out on his face, though Erik had tried not to draw attention to them. The mutilated fingers were wrapped in tight gauze, the final touch from a four-hour operation to reattach them. The doctors said he’d have to wait and see whether Charles got much movement back, but they were optimistic. 

“Yes, I know I needed to decide by last week. But I don’t know if I can handle another committee, Alex, I’m already going to have so much to catch up on when I get back,” a pause as his colleague said something at the other end of the phone, “Well did you tell him I’m on sick leave?” another pause, “Well did you tell him I was abducted by a _serial killer?_ ” 

Erik put the plates down on the end of the bed and came over to slide his arms around Charles’ shoulders. Charles was forced to transfer the phone to his bad hand and turn to the next page of the draft with a sort of clumsy flick. Erik snorted in his ear. 

“Tell Alex to fuck off,” he whispered. 

“Alex, my husband’s telling you to fuck off,” Charles said without missing a beat. “Do you want me to relay that to the dean or shall I? Good, see you in a couple of days. Bye now.” 

He hung up and put the cordless on top of the bureau. Erik let him hobble over to the bed on his own and flop down into the pillows. Somewhere between receiving the injury, pushing the joint back into place and jumping down a lift shaft, he’d torn two ligaments around the knee. It was strapped up thoroughly until he could put any weight on it. Yet another healing that ‘only time would tell’. But Charles had so far refused all attempts to help him walk around.

“You’re going back so soon?” Erik asked with a frown, sinking onto the mattress beside him. Charles had only got back from the hospital the day before, after numerous interviews with the new detectives on the Albertine case. 

“I have to, I’ve got two students with their theses coming up next month,” Charles pulled the French toast closer and bit down on the first slice. “Oh my God, take me now, Lehnsherr, I can’t believe I didn’t bring you to Europe with me as my personal chef.”

Erik pulled his own plate closer and began to cut up his breakfast with a knife and fork. “Then it’s lucky for you that I’m never letting you leave this house on your own again,” he rumbled. He was only mostly kidding. “Especially since I’m currently unemployed and getting bored.”

“You’re on leave. They won’t fire you for saving lives,” Charles said, but the jovial tone in his voice faded as he struggled to hold his own knife with his bandaged hand. “And if they do, I’ll call the news and make them put the whole story on the front page – fuck –“ he grunted as the knife skidded out of his hand and knocked two boysenberries off the plate. _”Dammit!”_

“Let me-”

“I don’t need you to cut up my food!” Charles snapped, picking the bleeding berries off the cream duvet.

Erik let him huff until he gave up and went back to eating with his fingers. He watched Charles avoid his eye. Within a few seconds, Charles had regained his cheer. It sounded only a little forced. “I was thinking about the whole serine inhibitor issue,” he said around a mouthful of toast. “I mean, I’ve got the Stockholm symposium in a few months, my visa will make me take them again though god knows I don’t want to.” 

A drizzle of butter had collected in the corner of his mouth. Erik couldn’t resist reaching over and wiping it away with his thumb, slipping the digit between Charles’ lips when Charles turned towards his hand. A soft tongue brushed across the pad of his thumb and for a moment Erik felt a jolt of openly broadcast lust, the need for something more than the quick fumble they’d had to celebrate getting home at last. 

Then Charles, determined to finish his story, smirked and went back to his breakfast. “And obviously it would be impractical for you to act as my bodyguard every time I go overseas, you simply can’t spare the time from work, so I think we should rope Moira into having a baby for us. With your sperm, of course, so the wee thing can deflect all the bullets I ever have to face. I’ll take it to conferences with me and do a study on it as it grows. Call it a longitudinal observation of mutant development under same-sex parenting,” he grinned at Erik around the last corner of his toast, his eyes sparkling. 

“The world is so lucky you were born in a post-Nuremburg era,” Erik said, leaning back into the pillows. He tried to smile in return, but he couldn’t help the sense that all these jokes, all this normality, was so fragile. How easily they had almost lost it.

“What? It’s a good idea. Don’t you think? Or do you just not want a human bearing your child?” Charles pushed his plate aside and settled down beside him, both of them lying on their backs. 

Erik winced. He glanced up at the bare ceiling, tucking one hand behind his head. “I keep thinking about that. About mutant-human division,” his mouth twitched as he felt Charles tense beside him. “When he was in my head… I mean, I barely remember much, but there are,” he wriggled his fingers, “flashes of what he was feeling. The real Albertine, not the psychopathically modified copy. He was so sure that what he believed was right. When he learned he was a mutant, it didn’t make him question himself, it just made those beliefs stronger…” he turned to look at Charles. “You’re the scientist. Can we ever really know when we’re wrong?”

“We can ask someone,” Charles said, a smile flicking at the corner of his mouth. He caught hold of Erik’s near hand and linked them together. Erik’s wedding ring glinted in the mesh of their fingers. Charles’ was still locked up as evidence. Erik watched a line of light move across the band as he twisted his wrist. 

Charles in turn was watching him, and suddenly craned his neck in to press a kiss to the edge of Erik’s jaw. Erik turned his head to meet it, to sink into the warmth of Charles’ mouth, the taste of egg and cinnamon still lingering on his breath, the smell of his skin potent beneath that. He pulled his fingers out of Charles’ grasp to cup his husband’s chin, slide around to the back of his neck and pull him in. Charles made a low thrum deep in his throat and brushed the pads of his fingers down to the hair curling over the open collar of Erik’s shirt. 

The phone rang. 

Erik resolutely ignored it. Charles pulled back with a quirk in his mouth, “You have to answer it sometime.”

“What if he’s still there? Somewhere – living in the wires,” Erik shook his head. 

“Then he’ll be terrified of meeting you again.”

“I’d rather he not learn the feeling’s mutual,” Erik grunted, but he levered himself onto one elbow and summoned the phone with a quick flick of his hand, the metal components inside drawn through the empty air into his palm. He put it to his ear. “Hello?”

“Oh, good, I thought for sure you’d be in bed with Charles at this hour,” Moira said. Erik groaned and thumped his head back on the pillow.

“I _am_ , Moira.”

Charles chuckled, mouthed _baby-mama_ at Erik and mimed having a huge belly with one hand while flashing a thumbs-up with the other.

Erik ran his hand through his hair. “Charles wants you to be our surrogate.”

“Yeah, alright,” said Moira. Before Erik could react she continued, “Listen, the two new guys on the case are having some trouble getting the Toynbee kid – Toad – to give a consistent statement, they asked if you could come down to the station? He keeps saying he’ll only speak to a mutant cop.”

“I’ll be there in an hour,” Erik said with a sigh. 

“Seriously?”

“Not a second earlier.”

“Fine. Have fun, you two,” Moira hung up.

Erik put the phone down on the bedside table. Charles had rolled onto his side and Erik ran his hand across the angle of his hip, then moved his palm back the way it had come, rucking up the cloth of Charles’ shirt until he was pressing on warm, living skin. There was still weight here, plenty of it despite three days of starvation. Neither of them were young, neither of them were perfect specimens anymore. He slipped his hand further up Charles' chest, dipping his thumb into his bellybutton, feeling the stiff brush of hair between Charles' nipples. He wanted to pin him down and work his way into Charles until he was begging for it, but no - he couldn't bring himself to restrain his husband, not even in play, for love. Not after what that monster had done, not with the bruises still yellowing around Charles' throat. 

"I know what you're thinking," Charles said, letting Erik map him out, making no move to help Erik slowly ease off his shirt. "But I'm not glass. We'll be fine."

"I know," Erik said, curving in to press a kiss to the place where Charles' diaphragm moved beneath his ribs.

 _Never again,_ he promised himself. _Never go past again._  
\---

_Epilogue_

It sounded like a damn typhoon out there. The rain was loud as gunfire on his full-glass walls and the wind like a banshee. And there was a leak! A leak, in his bloody half-million dollar villa! He’d call that lazy estate agent first thing in the morning, see if he didn’t. If it got any worse he’d have trees through the windows – he’d told those bastard neighbours to trim the branches, but they were a bunch of hippies who wouldn’t know a practical solution if it had bit them on the arse. God, sometimes he hated Florida.

And now there was the doorbell. Who the hell was visiting at this hour? If it was some kid with a broken-down car, he’d slam the door in his face – charity was for churches and liberals. 

He slopped down the stairs in his slippers and pulled open the door in the foyer. The warm ocean wind slammed inside, bringing rain with it to splatter on his tiles. It didn’t look like some punk kid. The guy standing there was in his thirties at least, wearing a long, hooded coat against the rain and carrying a briefcase. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of the hood, but he must be a salesman. What the hell was he doing going door to door in this weather?

“Mr Stryker?” the man asked. “Inspector William Stryker?” 

“Retired,” Bill grunted. “Who the hell are you?”

“My name is Detective Erik Lensherr,” he said, and somehow he’d stepped inside the threshold though Bill would be damned if he’d let him in. He could see the guy’s face properly now. Sharp eyes. The sort that Bill would’ve hauled in for questioning if this had been a scope-out. But this was his house, and the guy said he was a detective.

“Well, what do you want?” Bill barked.

“I’m just wondering if I can come in and have a chat,” the detective said, and he smiled widely.


End file.
